


suggestions for living your life in spoken verse

by 8611



Category: Star Trek: Alternate Original Series (Movies)
Genre: Alternate Universe - Post-Apocalypse, Character Death, F/M, M/M, Road Trips
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2014-05-26
Updated: 2014-05-26
Packaged: 2018-01-26 16:39:31
Rating: Mature
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 31,371
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/1695215
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/8611/pseuds/8611
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>In October of 1962 the Cuban Missile Crisis came to a head in the worst way possible – the world died. 25 years later, in what used to be the United States, Leonard McCoy is born. This, more than anything, is his story, from Atlanta to San Francisco with the broken prairies of Iowa in between.</p>
            </blockquote>





	suggestions for living your life in spoken verse

**Author's Note:**

> So I finally decided to repost the one bigbang I've ever done - this was for the 2010 ST BB. Unfortunately my original notes/thanks have been lost, but my betas were [affectingly](http://archiveofourown.org/users/affectingly/pseuds/affectingly) and [feebs](http://feebsasaurus.tumblr.com), and [here's](http://roachpatrol.livejournal.com/50292.html) the art post and [this is](http://epershand.dreamwidth.org/27727.html) the mix to go along with it. 
> 
> The poems in here are "I See The Boys of Summer" and "Do Not Go Gentle Into That Good Night" by Dylan Thomas, and "Pioneers! O Pioneers!" by Walt Whitman. 
> 
> Also, warnings: secondary character death (on screen via cancer and euthanasia), bit of disturbing imagery.

_Do not go gentle into that good night,_  
 _Old age should burn and rave at close of day;_  
 _Rage, rage against the dying of the light._

\---

The Cuban Missile Crisis does not go the way the US government would like it to. Or the American people, for that matter. The only people who get ahead are the Russians, because Cuba’s blown to kingdom come, too.

The North Koreans take out the Soviets years later, but that’s irrelevant to America. America does not exist anymore.

\---

“Lady with a baby coming through!”

A nurse is hauling the very pregnant, very much in labor form of a woman through Dr. McCoy’s makeshift clinic, causing the few people there to stare.

“Put me down,” the woman mutters, sagging onto a cot, breathing hard and clutching at her stomach. “I’m not an – _oh god_.”

“Lie down honey, c’mon.” The nurse helps the woman swing her legs over the side of the bed, wincing in sympathy. “Dr. McCoy!”

“He’s probably off playing with his virus vectors,” the woman mutters, flopping backwards on the bed as the nurse starts taking her pulse. “Can’t even be present for the birth of his own kid.”

“I’m right here, Elise,” someone answers, and David McCoy is suddenly at his wife’s side, soothing hair off her forehead. “Viruses are interesting, but this baby is more so.”

“Praise the lord,” Elise replies sarcastically, moaning when another contraction hits. “Let’s get this thing out of me before it kills me.”

“That’s the idea,” David replies with a little smile, pulling the curtains around the cot before sitting down on a stool.

Six hours later, David has already been kicked in the nose by his first kid (which is a hell of a thank you for bringing him into the world) and is curled up next to Elise, who’s got an armful of said kid.

“I still like Leonard,” Elise says softly, smiling down at the (finally sleeping) baby. 

“You’re still doped to the gills on painkillers. We are not naming the poor kid Leonard.” 

Elise reaches up to weakly shove David’s head to the side.

“I _like_ Leonard. And Horatio is so much better? It’s lame, honey.”

“Horatio is distinguished,” David counters, reaching out to run a finger down the baby’s chest. He’s delivered children before, but they’ve never been his, never had his hair and Elise’s eyes and it’s incredible to see it all in one little bundle of tiny human. He’s glad genetics worked out in the baby’s favor, his own eyes are a boring, muddy brown, but Elise has gorgeous eyes that change colors depending on the light and what she’s wearing. Although he did manage to get David’s just as boringly brown hair, but you win some, you lose some.

“No, it’s pretentious and terrible,” Elise means it to sound strong, but she’s a little worn out at the moment, and she’s pretty sure she has every right to be.

“Fine, we’ll just make it his middle name,” David concedes, because he knows that Elise is going to get her way on the Leonard bit.

“Leonard has a cute nickname,” Elise adds, rocking the baby just a tiny bit. “Len. You realize all the kids would call him Whore or something if we named him Horatio.”

“Elise!” David looks up at her, mouth open. “Where did you even come up with that?”

“I was a kid too, you know,” she smiles, kissing David on the nose. He rolls his eyes and wraps an arm around her shoulders.

“Fine, Leonard Horatio it is. I sure hope someone gives you an awesome nickname later in life that isn’t Len, kid,” David says to the baby, who just snuffles in his sleep.

“I still think Len works,” Elise says, settling against David’s shoulder, pressing their heads together.

“Yeah, Len does work.”

Elise drifts off, and David presses a fierce kiss into her hair, resting his forehead against her head. As far as he’s concerned this baby is damn near a miracle, if he still believed in being a religious man. Between cancer and infertility, birthrates are so low they might as well be in the negative numbers, but here’s his little boy in his wife’s arms, proving that all those statistics can go to hell in a handbasket. The baby’s healthy too, and David just knows somehow that he’ll grow up strong, that maybe he’s part of the first generation in two to actually do something, to remake this country. David’s parents were too sick, too broken to build a Renaissance out of the flames and the barren land, now David is just fighting to get along. But there’s talk of the forests coming back, for years now, of farmland sprung full of weeds and wild grasses, of the call of birds. He’ll hear them some mornings, the warbles and chirps, and it’s enough to make him race to the window and try to find the bird in question.

Just by having green grass below his feet and a blue sky above his head this baby has more than anyone else. 

\---

New York and Los Angeles are hit first, massive surface bombs. If people aren’t vaporized or crushed, they’re dead within days, bleeding out of everywhere the human body can bleed out of.

Chicago and DC are next. The Great Lakes are a disaster. Atlanta isn’t hit, but it deals with fallout from DC for years and years before it starts to fade.

Those still alive go underground, to wait it out. The population has been reduced to 11% of what it was. That’s just over 16 million. And more die every year.

\---

Len doesn’t see another child until he’s six. He’s tall for his age, but scrawny, and his mother says he has puppy feet. Evidently a puppy is what you call a little dog, like the wild ones that he sees roaming the outskirts of town sometimes – he had to look it up in his father’s old dictionary, which is the only book that David keeps on his desk. His dad’s office is technically off limits, but Len loves the books in there, and sneaks in when his dad’s at work and his mother is otherwise distracted.

They live outside a cornhusk of a city that shimmers in the afternoon sun on the horizon that his mother tells him was once called Atlanta. Places don’t really have names anymore, just directions. They’re South. Far South. His dad had pulled out a map and spread it across the kitchen table one day, showing Len where things used to be, how what was once Atlanta was once in a state called Georgia. David had given Len the map, let him tack it up on his wall, so that he can trace the roads and the rivers, follow the mountains to the flat lands and back again. The country was big once. Probably still is, but now not many people still remember that, because they stay in their little places.

Their little Town doesn’t really have anyone in charge, but they defer to Len’s dad, because he’s the doctor, and to an old man who had explained to Len once that he used to be in charge of the Atlanta police department. (Police was another word Len had to look up later.) Still though, they get along pretty well. David calls the old man Chief and Len calls him Herb. Herb’s so ancient he was born in a time when horses were giving way to cars. David claims he’s got no clue how the man’s still alive, Herb’s almost 100 and has a back full of scars from where he was caught in a house fire when Atlanta burned in ’62. By all rights he should be dead, but he keeps on going.

There are a few couples, a few groups of young people, a lot of drifters who stopped being drifters when they came to Town and set up shop in one of the old painted ladies. But there are no families until Len is six.

That year he meets two children on the same day. First is the infant daughter of the Nichols, a couple from Up North, but only so far as to be kind of in the Center, who they call Gaila. She’s born a few days earlier, but Len gets to see her when she’s all of four days old.

“Her hair’s red,” Len murmurs, watching the baby grab at her mother’s long hair as Mrs. Nichols holds her down low enough for Len to see her. “I didn’t know you could have that color hair.”

“Blonde, red, brown, black, that’s about it,” Mrs. Nichols answers with a smile. “Until you get old like Herb and it all goes grey.”

Len’s never really thought about the idea that people are born, that they get older and older. He’s never seen a person so small, tiny little hands curled into fists to tug on Mrs. Nichols’ hair. She’s got brown hair, but now that Len really looks at it, he can see snatches and glints of red in it. When he goes back home, down Main with his hands in his pockets and his mother’s hand resting on the top of his head, his shoulder from time to time, he finally asks her.

“How does that work?”

“How does what work?” She stops them, and they sit down on the curb.

“Going from being a baby to Herb. Am I gonna end up that way?” He looks deathly serious and Elise can’t help it, she laughs and shakes her head in amusement.

“Well, no one but Herb ends up being Herb. But yes, people are born and eventually they get old. We get older every day. Think of how much you’ve grown in the past year,” she says, holding her hand out, palm flat and parallel to the ground, right near his ear. “You’re a weed. You’ll be tall like the rest of us in no time.”

“I’m not a weed, I’m a person,” he mutters, looking up at his mother, and she smiles, ruffling his hair. It’s gotten long, falling into his eyes and curling at the back of his neck.

“You are for sure a person, babydoll,” she promises, and then helps him back up. It’s September and it’s humid and it makes Len’s shirt stick to his back.

When they get home there’s a group of three people standing on the front porch, talking with David. Elise instantly puts a hand on Len’s shoulder, holding him close as they walk across the parched lawn and up the steps.

“Oh good, you guys are home.” David wraps an arm around Elise and nods to the people. “These are the Graysons, just got into Town an hour ago. Sarek, Amanda, and their son is Spock.”

Len’s looking at Spock in particular. He’s at eye level with Len, but where Len is gangly and all feet, Spock is skinny and looks like his own feet don’t get in his way. Len watches Spock, frowning. Len thought all six-year-olds looked like Len did, but no, Spock couldn’t look more different if he tried. His skin is pale, not like Len’s, and he wonders if maybe Spock doesn’t play outside enough, doesn’t see the sun as much as he needs to. His hair’s also cut straight across like a board, and Len kind of wants to reach out and mess it up, just to see what would happen.

“Why don’t we go inside, the kids can get to know each other and play,” David is saying as Elise gives Len’s shoulder one last squeeze, and he looks up to see her wink down at him.

“It’s safe for the children to be unattended?” Sarek asks, and Elise just nods.

“Oh sure, as long as they don’t wander too far. Route 19’s banged up enough that no one really tries to pass through, we’re pretty safe.”

Sarek and Amanda take some convincing, but eventually they vanish into the shade of the house with Len’s parents, leaving Len with Spock. They sit on the top step and Len takes off his shoes, toeing at the dust on the steps. He’s not supposed to go barefoot, but he likes the feeling of the ground under his feet.

“I have never been allowed to be alone outside,” Spock suddenly says, and Len wrinkles his nose, letting out a little huff. 

“That’s stupid,” Len tells him point blank, rolling a little rock back and forth under his palm, liking the noise it makes across the wooden planks. “Is that why you’re so pale?” 

“I do not spend a lot of time in the sun, yes.”

“The sun’s good for you,” Len says, standing up and dusting off his shorts. “C’mon, there’s a brook behind the house, I’ll find you a frog.”

“I’m not sure – _brook_?” Spock gets up, following him, looking unsure about the world at large.

“Yeah, you know, water,” Len tells him, rolling his eyes. Spock doesn’t respond, just shadows Len around the house, his perfect hair still in place, never mind that there’s a bit of a breeze kicking around.

Turns out Len has to teach Spock what a frog is, too.

\---

The thing is, if this was just America’s problem, the world would have gone on. If it was just a contained event, everything would have been ok.

Russia is obliterated. Surface bombs mean the fallout will last for decades, maybe even centuries. It drifts across Europe, pollutes everything. It’s not safe for anyone.

People strike back. Between actual destruction and later fallout, the world goes to shit. Canada tries to help the US for a few years, long enough that fuel cells are perfected and medicine jumps ahead.

Eventually that border is closed. Canada has its own problems. From 1986 onward, the US is on their own. No one’s allowed in or out.

\---

Elise tells him one winter that it used to be warmer here, that maybe you’d see snow only once, twice a year as December faded into January, nothing but dull grey skies and chilly air. But now the frost starts snapping a few weeks into October and doesn’t give up until March starts to thaw.

It’s one of those October nights, just cool enough that Len is wearing a hooded sweatshirt and jeans, sitting out on the porch roof outside his bedroom window. They’re supposed to be conserving generator power for the heat they’ll need in the coming months, so he’s got an oil lamp hung off the window latch, swinging gently in the breeze and making the pages of the book he’s reading look yellow in the low light. Every winter everyone worries that they won’t have the hydrogen to make it through the cold season, and every year somehow the supplies hold long enough for production to start up again in the summer when they don’t have to use the power for much else. Len’s heard stories that it’s easier up North, where they’ve got real, clean water to help with everything, but down here they get by however they can. They’ve been doing it for going on fifty years, and things don’t seem likely to change.

He’s reading about anatomy out of one his grandfather’s old textbooks – he was the last one in the family to have seen the inside of a medical school that wasn’t a burned out mess – and letting his breath puff out in little clouds of condensation, his toes curling in his sneakers, when he hears his bedroom door open.

“Len?” It’s Spock. Len sighs and scrubs at his face with a hand.

“Out here,” he calls back, and listens as Spock walks quietly across the room and then shoves the window far enough open to shimmy out onto the roof. He’s all awkward limbs that are too long for his body, and he curls up, his knees to his chest and his arms around his legs, looking like a stick insect all bent up at angels.

“It’s cold out,” Spock mumbles into the neck of his sweater, his eyebrows drawn together. “Why are you out here?” 

“Thought I’d enjoy one of the last nights of the year where I could go outside without freezing my tail off.”

“You don’t have a tail.”

Len just snorts in amusement and rolls his eyes, going back to his book. Spock knows he’s speaking metaphorically, but he’s never been able to resist calling out how ridiculously some of Len’s turns of phrase are. Spock’s from far enough Northeast that he never quite settled into Len’s way of speaking.

Spock’s quiet for a while, although fidgety, and Len tries to read for another few minutes before he looks over at Spock, pursing his lips. Spock is staring at his knees and mouthing something to himself, drumming his fingers on his shins.

“Spock, what do you need?” Len sounds bored.

“I would like to do an experiment,” Spock says suddenly, looking up at Len. “If you would help me, that is.” 

“Look, I’m reading, and I don’t want to have to-”

“We can do it right here.”

Len raises an eyebrow, but what the hell, as long as he doesn’t have to move, he’ll go along with Spock.

“Well good, because the last time I helped with an experiment we nearly blew up the garden shed.” That had nearly been a nightmare and then some. They don’t have the kind of water resources to put out fires. Len’s pretty sure that if he and Spock had been responsible for burning down Town, they’d be run out of it. Or lynched.

“I have apologized for that many times,” Spock mutters darkly, but he’s scooting closer, until he’s almost in Len’s lap, leaning over him. Len blinks at him in puzzlement, leaning away from Spock. As a general rule, Spock’s not a tactile person at all, and unlike Len who has no issues about getting in people’s faces, usually respects personal space.

“Uh, what’re-” Len starts, but Spock cuts him off.

“After much reading and research on the subject, I have learned that kissing is pleasurable and that I want to try it.”

“You’re gonna _kiss me_? Whoa, whoa, that was not in the plan, moron, I don’t even like you like that – I mean I don’t like you to begin with, but –”

“Len, please.” Spock sounds like he’s asking him to help save the world. “This has little to do with romance and everything to do with science.”

“You and that whole ‘in the name of science’ shtick never end well,” Len growls, but Spock keeps creeping until Len can’t lean back any further because the wall of the house is at his back and Spock has all but crawled over him. Spock gives him one last look before diving in the last few inches and pressing their lips together.

Len’s old enough to know that he wants to kiss people, but he’s never actually done it before, and his thoughts haven’t strayed very far past people like Jocelyn, a girl from a few towns over, and certainly never to Spock. He makes a little strangled ‘mfph!’ sound as Spock presses against his chest, and one of his hands comes up kind of its own mind to settle on the side of Spock’s neck, resting against his pulse. Spock’s lips are dry and cracked from the cold, probably the same way Len’s are, but they’re at least soft, and he can feel Spock’s eyelashes fluttering against his skin. But that’s it. Lips on lips. Spock’s body heat feels good, but nothing else really does, and he pulls back awkwardly, the back of his head thumping against the wood siding.

“I-” Spock looks confused. “That was not pleasurable.”

“Are you saying I’m a bad kisser?” Len demands, frowning. He had meant to say something smart, but, well. You win some, you lose some.

“No, I believe your technique is fine, but I don’t find you romantically stimulating.” Spock clears his throat. “Sorry.”

“It’s because you’re a stuffy, insufferable idiot,” Len tells him blankly, flipping his book back open to the page he was on. “I warned you that we didn’t even like each other.”

“We get along fine,” Spock points out, and Len guesses they do, in sort of an antagonistic best friend because no one else is around sort of way. “I would guess it’s because you lack features I enjoy.”

“Oh?” Len replies dryly, back to looking at his book.

“Yes. While I’m sure you will grow up to be good looking, right now you are awkward looking, at best.” Spock says this like he means it in a purely academic way, but that doesn’t keep Len from slapping him upside the head with his book and vowing that he hates Spock. Like, a whole lot.

\---

Their one sliver of hope is that the learning curve for technology got its ass in gear after everything. It’s steep, and it’s tough, but within ten years Canada and what’s left of the US have working hydrogen fuel cells.

Medicine changes, gets better. Anything that can treat radiation sickness or cancer is shoehorned into working, and working quickly. Not everything works, but they sure as hell try. Giving up isn’t an option anymore.

When Canada withdrawals, can’t support America anymore, that shell of a country is left lopsided, unsure and unbalanced. They make their own way, as a half society running on nuclear winter, cassette tapes, and hydrogen.

\---

Len’s read enough to know that once, Before, people used money. Actual currency that you could hold in your hand. His dad’s showed him some, wrinkled slips of paper and hard coins that clinked together when he rolled them around his palm. It’s weird for him to think that to get anything you used that one thing, that you handed over the right amount and you’d have whatever you need. Now people just get by with trades, little things that go back and forth. Len’s pretty set because David is the only doctor for miles, so everyone’s more than willing to help the McCoy’s out with whatever they might need. It’s even gotten to the point where Len can help out in a pinch, little things like that don’t need to be dragged back to the clinic on Main Street.

Len also knows that if this was Before that he’d be leaving this year, leaving to go study. Go to a university. Get a degree. Life doesn’t work that way anymore though, and so instead his mother’s taught him all she knows, literature, math, chemistry, art, and now his dad’s making noise about really getting Len down to the clinic on a regular basis, learning how to be a doctor.

He thinks about that sometimes, how none of the kids are ever going to get to go to college. There are at least enough young children now that Mrs. Tucker’s started up a school, and it makes him grin when he hears them complaining about it sometimes, having to do _homework_. Len thinks they’re lucky that they even know what that word means, Spock and he are old enough that schoolwork and homework were one in the same. Especially for Spock.

Spock, who’s currently fiddling with the tape deck in the McCoy’s old pickup, frowning softly when it whirs dangerously and starts making noises like _chn chn chn_. Spock pulls out the cassette tape that had been in the player with a startled look on his face, checking it for loose mag.

“It might be time to give it up,” Len says, one arm hanging out the rolled down window and the other on the steering wheel. They’re rattling down one of the dirt roads out of the center of Town, out to the Nichols’ orchard. Len’s mom had sent him out to go get apples for baking, something about a holiday called Decoration Day to honor soldiers from wars long gone from everyone’s memory. Holidays don’t mean a whole lot anymore, although a few years ago the kids in Town got a hold of a book about Halloween, and they’ve demanded it be celebrated every year since.

“I am certain it can be fixed,” Spock mutters, leaning down far enough to be on eyelevel with the player. The pickup’s from 1965, one of the last cars Ford managed to churn out with some well placed Canadian help before the last of the country’s infrastructure collapsed, and at this point it’s old as sin. The tape deck was procured illegally a few years ago (not that Len’s parents know that part of the story) and cobbled onto the dash like a part of Frankenstein, although it’s notorious for breaking, and at this point Len’s got an idea that it might be finally beyond saving.

“I’m not,” Len smirks, shifting gears as the Nichols’ front fence comes into view. The orchard isn’t more than 50, 60 trees, but it keeps the Town going pretty well, and the Nichols grow vegetables, too. Between them and the crazy guy down to the south of Town with the chickens and sheep, life’s pretty normal, and at least mostly balanced.

They roll to a stop at the side of the old house, a cloud of dust following the car, and Len goes around to the back to get the sturdy woven baskets they cart produce around in, Spock already waiting for him in front of the car.

“It might be time to get a new tape deck,” Spock concedes as they walk around the back of the house. Mrs. Nichols is working on her flower garden and Gaila is helping – if working on a project of her own can be considered helping.

“Hey boys,” Mrs. Nichols smiles, standing up and pulling off her gardening gloves, “You here for apples or what?” 

“Apples _and_ what,” Len says, and Mrs. Nichols laughs. “My mom’s doing Decoration Day dinner for everyone tomorrow.”

“Oh, that’s right, she is. Gaila, come help.” Mrs. Nichols leads them off and Gaila trots up, falling into step with Len and Spock.

“Want a bracelet? I know they’re kinda girly, but they’re cool.” Gaila asks, grinning up at Len. She’s got a few thin thread bracelets in various bright colors in her hands, woven in different ways.

“If you don’t mind sharing your hard work, I’d love one,” he says, smiling at her and ruffling her mop of red curls. He likes Gaila – she’s like a ray of sun in human form, bouncy and sunny and always the one to cheer someone up. He’s seen her upset maybe all of three times in the 12 years he’s watched her grow up, but she always snaps back, all smiles and laughter pretty damn soon. The day Herb died, she was the one handing out little paper stars she’d made, folded to make them 3D. She put a lot of smiles of people’s faces that day; Herb had been the first person to die in a long time and the town wasn’t quite prepared for it, no matter how insanely ancient the man was.

“Course not!” Gaila chirps, and he stops and kneels down so that she can wrap two of them around his wrist – one that’s red and orange and the other that’s a few shades of blue. She ties them off and pats the back of his hand like he’s a puppy. “There, now you’ve got one for me and one for you.”

“I’m pretty sure my hair isn’t blue,” he laughs, and Gaila rolls her eyes.

“Um, _duh_ , it’s because you always wear blue,” Gaila says, and Len can hear the teenager creeping into her tone and it makes him smile. Gaila’s going to be a handful, but a good handful. Mrs. Nichols can be just about as fiery, so at least she’s prepared.

They catch up to the other two as Mrs. Nichols is loading up Spock’s basket with Granny Smiths from one side of the row and Golden Deliciouses from the other.

On the way home Len lets his hand with the bracelets rest on the steering wheel, smiling at the colors and the way they pop like little bits of light against the dull interior of the truck and the graygold of the tall grass on either side of the road.

\---

The thing about Len is that he can’t do anything in halves, can’t be apathetic unless something really hurts, so when his mother teaches him as a child up into adulthood that the most important thing in life now is love, is the relationships he builds for himself, the people he share his life with, he goes with it. He’s never had a problem loving people, he loves the same way he feels any other emotion – unconditionally. He knows a lot of folks guard who they are these days, but he can’t help it, he’s wildly passionate about pretty much everything, including people.

He loves Elise and David because they’ve raised him, taught him, reined him in when he needed it and loved him always. They’re his parents. He’s half of each, and he loves them for all of that.

He loves Spock in a way that he’ll never tell Spock, but at this point he’s his right arm, always there, always helping, whether it’s helping to get into trouble, or out of it. They’ve been attached at the hip since they were six, and although it’s more of an arranged marriage than one of love, they put up with each other.

He loves Gaila in the way he’d love a younger sibling, in the way that he watches her grow up, watches her spread her wings. He cares about how she’s doing, what she’s learning, where she wants to go in life. Len’s normally got about a ten minute span of attention for conversations, but he can listen to Gaila prattle on about god knows what for hours and be totally ok with it.

He’s not sure what he feels about Clay and Jocelyn. He didn’t grow up with them like he did Spock. Clay lives clear on the other side of Atlanta, but when Len is twenty, Clay spends a summer at Jocelyn’s house because their parents are friends, and that’s how Len meets him. He’s taller than Len, but not broader (and considering Len’s grown up to be built like somewhat of a brick wall that’s not surprising) and he’s got sandy, dull hair that he keeps long around his ears. He’s good looking, in a boring, simple way. Corn fed and raised, farm boy through and through, with a wide easy smile and eyes that are always smirking. When Len goes up there for a party at the end of the summer he doesn’t expect to end up kissing Clay in the Darnell’s kitchen, but that’s how life goes.

Len’s never really gotten around to sleeping with anyone before, and Clay only knows what he’s doing when there isn’t another dick involved, so when they make their way up to the guest room where Clay is staying it’s awkward and it’s one hell of a bumpy ride, but in the end it doesn’t outright suck, and Len finds it fun to trace Clay’s freckles with his fingers, his lips, his tongue, and Clay doesn’t seem to mind much either, the way he arches under Len’s body. They’re new to it, but in a way they’re not, because isn’t this what their ancestors have been doing for thousands of years? There’s something basal about it that Len appreciates as a subconscious drive.

Afterwards they open up the window in the room and watch the party go on down out back, candle lanterns hung between the big old trees. Most of the kids have quieted down, and the adults separated off to talk. Jocelyn’s sitting with a few other people who are at that weird in-between age, certainly not tuckered out from playing tag, but not ready to discuss topics with solemn faces like the adults. They’re not parents yet, they don’t have jobs yet, they just are. They float, until something anchors them and they have to grow up. 

Len’s medical training is starting to do that, starting to take hold, but he’s still not above it when Clay comes back with a bottle of someone’s home brewed beer that’s way too strong to just be beer, and they pass it back and forth, eyes watering and throats burning because the shit’s so strong.

“I’m not, uh,” Clay clears his throat, less from the alcohol and more out of confusion. “Exclusively attracted to guys. You know.”

“Neither am I, it’s not a big deal,” Len answers, one arm dangling lazily out the window, resting on the sill. 

“Sounds good,” Clay shrugs, and that’s it. “In fact, I think I kind of really like Jocelyn.”

“Who doesn’t?” Len sighs, and isn’t that the goddamn truth. Jocelyn is gorgeous in all the right places, and the way she’s lounging right now in a bikini top and a pair of cut off jeans, her feet up on the table and her head thrown back in laughter, sure is helping. She’s got bright hair that she normally keeps curled up in a clip, but right now it’s falling down her back, like a bunch of shooting stars running together under the lanterns.

“I don’t know if she even thinks of me past that guy she grew up with,” Clay mutters, and Len thumps him good naturedly on the shoulder in solidarity. Jocelyn seems to be this creature who’s not about boys, not about even girls for that matter, just about books and what the world used to be. She’s claimed before that if the world hadn’t gone to shit she’d be a lawyer, fighting the good fight. Now no one gives a rat’s ass if someone was a lawyer or not, it’s a useless profession.

“Want to go back down?” Len asks after the bottle’s empty, and Clay shakes his head and turns those smirking eyes on Len, and well, if Len doesn’t make it back home until the next morning, no one’s asking why.

Len spends a lot of the next few months up with the Darnell’s, after Clay stays on past the summer because the town has one of the few libraries left intact and he’s still working there, spends a lot of time in Clay’s bed. And when no one’s home, a lot of time in various parts of the house, bent over tables and couches or whatever else they can find.

One morning he wakes up curled in the various blankets on Clay’s bed to find that Clay’s already left for work, something of a common occurrence, and slips out of bed, shivering when his bare feet hit the ground, searching around for his jeans and shirt. Outside there’s frost covering everything, blanketing the trees and the ground like a dusting of flour, making the sun seem that much harsher.

He’s pulling his boots on at the back door when someone comes in, and he looks up to find it’s Jocelyn, wrapped up tight in a scarf and mittens, her cheeks red and her eyes bright.

“Clay not here?” She asks as she unwinds the scarf. It’s long and multicolored in thick bands across it, and he notices that the green and the yellow in it match her mittens, which she pulls off with her teeth.

“Nope,” Len answers, standing up and reaching for his jacket. Jocelyn stops him, catching his wrist in one hand. He stares at her, the coolness of her palms feeling odd against his skin.

“I know you’re fucking,” she says without an ounce of emotion, and lets his wrist drop.

“Yeah, and?” He has no earthly idea where this conversation is going, let alone where it’s going to end up.

“Are you dating him?”

“Uh – no.” Dating would probably constitute other things besides just sex. Like real conversations and dinner or something, who knows. Len’s never dated anyone, but he’s smart enough to know that Clay’s not his boyfriend.

“Good,” Jocelyn says, and then she kisses him. Len was not expecting it, opens his mouth in shock, and Jocelyn takes it as an invitation, and Len’s never kissed anyone quite like this, the way she goes after him. He’s dully aware that she’s backed him into the wall, and although the sensible part of his brain is pointing out that while he thinks Jocelyn is the hottest thing this side of Atlanta, he doesn’t care about her like Clay does. Likes her, sure, thinks she’s an amazing woman, hell yes. Loves her? Not like that, not like you can tell Clay does when he looks at her. Or that’s what he’s telling himself to stay sane, to make things easier. To not think about what this all means.

He raises his hands to push her back, but instead his fingers unbutton her jacket, pull it open so that he can get his hands on her hips, under her shirt, his skin on hers.

It’s only after they’ve fucked, hard and fast on the kitchen table, its legs scrapping against the floor, with Jocelyn’s legs around his waist, her heels dug into his back, that Len’s brain kicks back in.

“Clay loves you, you know,” he blurts out, because he’s stupid.

“I know,” Jocelyn answers in a small voice, trailing her fingers up his chest. They’re resting up against the cabinets, shoulder to shoulder. “He’s a great guy, and I know he’s always been that way, and he’ll stay that way, but I needed this.”

“For what?”

“What did you need it for?”

Len’s got to think about that one. He doesn’t like the answer. It’s shallow and stupid, and Jocelyn watches the emotions flick across his face.

“Just to see,” he answers eventually, dully.

“Yeah, just to see,” Jocelyn agrees, and then she swings her body around, straddling him and kissing him in that same fierce way, and Len realizes that it’s the way he kisses, unapologetically and with everything behind it. They’re the same, in a way, can’t hide what they’re feeling, and this is probably hurting them both, but after this he can let them both go, let them get together. They’ll be good together, get married, get a house, have kids. Jocelyn will be the justice in the house and Clay the heart, and they’ll work perfectly.

In the mean time, on the kitchen floor, he makes her moan and scream for the second time, the last time, and loves the way she tastes on his tongue.

\---

Len’s always viewed David as an unwavering presence, always there, strong, solid. He doesn’t change, he just is. He’s been that way for Len’s whole life. So when he starts fading, Len suddenly doesn’t know what to do. And considering normally when he’s unsure of what’s happening he goes to his dad, the whole situation has become roundabout and bass akwards in a major way.

“You’re not going to cure cancer by dinner,” Elise says one morning after breakfast, when it’s only Len left at the table, hands buried in his hair as he pours over yet another outdated medical journal. That’s his biggest issue right now – most advancements were homegrown, local, his dad did it for fertility treatments, he’s well versed in the whole issue. Maybe someone’s cured cancer out West, he might never know, because word just doesn’t spread like that anymore. They’re localized and cut off. So people can have kids here, but they die of cancer anyway. Maybe somewhere else no one’s having kids but they’re not all dying at 50 or 60 as their body tears them down from the inside out.

“We don’t even know if he’s got cancer,” Len grumbles, shoving his hair out of his face. He’s let it get long, curling down around his ears almost to his shoulders, but pulling it back with a rubber band still doesn’t do anything, and his bangs won’t stay behind his ears, so in the mean time it’s a nuisance. He should just cut it, but he’s got other things going on.

“Perfectly healthy man who’s 56? Run the tests if you want to, I can tell you I know it’s cancer,” Elise murmurs, sitting down next to him. She takes one of her own bobby pins out of her hair and pulls Len’s hair back, like he’s a little kid. He thinks about batting her hand away, but there’s a pinched sort of pain in her eyes, so he lets her. He feels stupid, probably looks girly, but he lets her.

“Gut feelings aren’t diagnoses,” Len sighs, even though he’s being a hypocrite, how many times has he or his dad based a diagnoses on experience and faith? They don’t always have tests to run, can’t always get access to the equipment they’d need, so they just make do with what seems right in those cases.

“So like I said, run the tests,” Elise closes the journal, taking Len’s chin so that she can look at him. “Not knowing doesn’t change what it is.”

“I don’t want to lose him,” Len says quietly, looking away and lacing his fingers together, cracking them because he suddenly feels weak, needs the noise. “I can’t lose him.”

“I don’t want that to happen either, honey,” Elise says, still pulling bits of Len’s hair back, distraction in the same way he’s cracking his knuckles.

“I’ll run the tests,” Len says after he can’t stand the silence anymore, and he gets up, away from the sudden feeling of claustrophobia in the kitchen, and he doesn’t even remember quite how he gets his boots on and his keys in his hand, how he gets out to the truck. Something tells him to go to Spock’s first, just around the corner, and he kicks the pickup into park, resting his head on the steering wheel. He’s not shocked when there’s a tap at the window, and he blearily looks up to find Spock staring down at him.

“Hi,” he says roughly after he rolls the window down. Spock just continues looking at him, like he’s a puzzle or something. “You free?”

“I am,” Spock says simply. “Would you like me to accompany you, wherever you’re going?”

“Yeah. Yeah, that’d be good.” Len’s voice feels wrong. Spock gives him one last long look before he simply walks around to the other door, getting in without any other questions.

The closest big hospital is on the outskirts of Atlanta, safe now from fallout all these years later, and mostly intact. It had gone into nuclear lockdown when everything happened, and not many people have gotten through the blast doors to loot the place. The only reason Len’s been able to get in for all these years are a set of keys that his grandfather had, back when he worked at the hospital. The janitor had entrusted them to the elder McCoy, and the keys had been passed down. Half of the equipment and drugs are an outdated mess, the other half can still be salvaged or used. Len and his father have drained about half the pharmacy since they first opened the hospital, but there are still a few usable things left.

He thinks about leaving Spock with the truck running, but Spock looks about ready to ask if he can come in, so he turns the truck off and gives Spock a side glance.

“It’s not pretty in there.”

“I can handle dust and decay.”

“There are still bodies in there, Spock.”

He’s quiet for a few moments before he gets out, and Len just shrugs, walking with him. Because the power failed after the lockdown a lot of people on life support just winked out of existence like that, leaving them in what amounted to a building sized sarcophagus. Len’s seen everything from mummies where the conditions were preserved in sealed rooms to husked out skeletons where kids had broken the windows with rocks and bits of metal, letting the Southern humidity and heat in. No one had tried to move anyone, although along the way someone good with metalworking skills had stuck up a memorial plaque on the main entrance doors.

The door Len’s always gone through is a side one, and it takes a bit of jimmying, always has, but he’s always gotten in. It’s cool and dark inside, only lit by the window in the door, and their footsteps echo off the halls and the ceiling, the only disturbance of the calm. Their breathing is inaudible, lost in the sound of their footsteps.

“I have only seen one corpse in my life,” Spock says when they pass the doors marked ‘morgue’ – the one room Len’s never explored. Never wanted to. It’s a sealed crypt, it should stay that way. “A man had died in his car on the highway, and we drove past it. I was five. He was – gray.”

“It happens,” Len mumbles, hands in his pockets.

“I read about the stages of decomposition in an effort to know more about his condition. I kept my mother up for weeks with my nightmares, it was –” Spock stops for a moment, frowns, “-illogical.”

“What, wanting to know? That’s never illogical,” Len says before turning a corner, letting Spock follow. “Just plain curiosity.”

“I should not have found it frightening,” Spock answers as Len shoulders open the door to the radiology labs. The main storeroom is off of the waiting area for the whole department, and it takes another key before he opens the door, kicking it all the way open and sticking a wedge he’d placed there years ago under the door to keep it that way.

“Death’s a creepy thing,” Len says, fishing his flashlight out of his back pocket and flipping it on to read labels. They’re almost out of most of the radiopharmaceuticals, the hospital was never overstocked with them in the first place. “It’s not ‘illogical’ to be afraid of it.”

“But shouldn’t we be used to it?” Spock asks, still standing by the door. “We are the way we are because of mass death and destruction.”

“You never, _ever_ , get used to death,” Len growls, looking back at Spock. “It’s not something to get used to. It’s not something to just be accepted, rolled over, whatever. You mourn it, you remember it, and you learn from it. But you never get _used_ to it.”

Spock’s quiet after that, his hands folded behind his back. “What are you looking for?” Spock asks after a while.

“This,” Len says, pulling what he was searching for off the shelf and holding it up for Spock to see, shining the flashlight on it. The bottle glows under the direct light. “Technetium. You can use it to trace tumors in cancer patients.”

“Don’t you normally just know it’s cancer?” Spock asks as Len comes back out, letting the door shut and lock behind him.

“We can usually just tell, not much else will get you first, but this is,” Len purses his lips, rubbing at the back of his neck. “It’s different. I just want to make sure.”

“Is one of the children sick?” Spock suddenly looks vaguely ill, he’s a giant softie when it comes to kids and house cats.

“No,” Len sighs.

It takes him all the way back to the truck to answer.

“My dad is,” he says finally, and although Spock’s eyebrows jump, he remains totally impassive, save the hand he lays over Len’s on the gearshift.

\---

David McCoy, always a fighter, does not give up that fall, or that winter. He makes it most of the way through spring, as warm weather is cresting over the empty fields and Len has just turned 26. He doesn’t even remember it’s his birthday until Elise shows up with a cupcake at lunchtime, kissing Len on the temple.

“I’m getting old,” Len mutters and Elise just rolls her eyes with a little laugh that doesn’t manage to light up her eyes. Nothing does anymore.

It’s barely two weeks later when he walks by the door to his father’s office and something in the back part of his brain, the rational part that he likes shoving away, tells him that it’s time. David is propped up in the old armchair in the corner, having refused to be bedridden. He’s got his eyes closed and Elise is reading to him, poetry, although Len doesn’t know who it is. Unless you were looking for it – and Len is – you wouldn’t even notice the pinched look at the edge of David’s eyes, the way his skin’s gone sallow. His breathing is labored, although he’s doing everything to control it.

Len knocks on the doorframe and Elise looks up, looking slightly hollow.

“He’s in pain,” Elise says as Len comes over and David cracks an eye open. They’re almost tarnished gold in the late afternoon light streaming through the windows, the curtains drawn back. Len ignores it, tells himself it’s just a trick of the light.

“Don’t worry about it,” David murmurs, smiling weakly.

“I can’t-“ Len purses his lips, looking at Elise. “His liver’s already in danger of shutting down.”

“Won’t need that for much longer anyway,” David starts to laugh, but it turns into a cough, and Elise looks like she’s the one in pain, every inch of her body made of hard, ramrod lines, her lips pressed together and her neck tight. She presses a palm to David’s forehead, anchoring his head until he waves her off.

Len hates seeing his father like this. He wanted to stop it so badly, but this new, angry, snarling cancer of David’s generation moves too quickly. What had started out as thyroid cancer had metastasized like a dust storm, swallowing up everything in its path. It’s a death sentence, no questions asked, it’s just how long someone’s body can put up a fight. Some people just give up, die within a month or two. David’s taken much longer, but he’s losing now. Some days Len sees a vision of his future, other days he sees something that won’t come to pass because things will have gotten better, they will have fixed this by then. If nothing else Len was born 25 years after the fallout. He’s safe.

He hates himself for being safe when his father isn’t.

“Elise, can I get some tea?” David asks, smiling at Elise, and she nods in that same tight way, gently setting the book on the arm of the chair and reaching out for Len. He lets her ground herself on his shoulder for a moment before she leaves, her footsteps fading down the hall to the kitchen.

“That was a really weak ploy to get her out of the room,” Len teases, because if he doesn’t laugh he feels like he’s going to punch a wall.

“It worked,” David points out, and then holds up a hand. The tips of his fingers and his nails are yellowing. “I think it’s probably time to let this old ship sail.”

Len sucks in a breath and sits down on the stool Elise had been using, rubbing at his face and refusing to look at his father. When he looks back David’s eyes are all the way open and Len would be a fucking moron to think that the yellowing of his eyes was from the setting sun. He looks down at the floor, catching the spine of the book out of the corner of his eye – _The Collected Works of Dylan Thomas_. It makes his throat hurt.

“Though wise men at their end know dark is right,” Len murmurs, running a finger down the spine. It’s dry and cool, the rough canvas pulling at his calluses from helping Spock with repair work on water purifiers and fuel cells.

“She wouldn’t read me that one,” David smirks, and Len snorts humorously. “You’ve done this before.”

“Yeah, but never to my own _father_ ,” Len mutters, hand clenching on the book. “Never to someone I’d known my whole life like I know you.”

“It’s part of the job,” David sighs, and he looks back over at Len, who’s avoiding his eyes. “I’ve lived my life. If it was just my liver I’d still have another month, but it’s not.”

“I know.” Len doesn’t need to be reminded, knows that multi-system failure has never been more apt.

“Please, Len, look at me,” David says, and Len does, stony and cold, locked down because he can’t deal with anything else. “I’ve seen the world, I’ve fixed hundreds of people, I’ve taken people out of the universe and brought others into it. Don’t mourn this, celebrate the life I’ve been able to lead.”

“I get stupid when I love people,” Len admits softly, and he picks up the book to place it in his lap, drums his fingers on the cover. “I don’t want you to die.”

“Being compassionate is never stupid,” David tells him. “The passion you have for the people in your life is what makes you an excellent doctor and a good person. Own that.”

“Thanks,” Len whispers, and for the first time he reaches out to take David’s hand, clutching it in his own. Elise finds them like that, Len just listening to David breathe. She sets a heavy mug down on the desk, and Len watches the steam curl out of it for a moment, caught in the dust that’s floating in the golden light of the late afternoon. He gets up slowly and awkwardly, like he’s been sitting still all day, and leaves without a word, not wanting to intrude on what’s about to happen.

He’s almost all the way to the foyer when he sags against the wall, putting out a hand to the plaster and paint and sliding down, crumpling in a heap. He doesn’t realize he’s still got the book of poetry until he’s clutching it against his chest, breathing hard. He sits there, staring at the opposite wall and feeling like he’s going to throw up, before he finally lets the book slip out of his hands. It clunks against the wood floor, landing on its front cover.

He forces himself not to throw up, not to cry, not to do anything but get up and move like a machine, mechanical and unthinking, to the front door. He wouldn’t normally have what he needs in his bag, but something rational has made him keep the required drugs in his bag for the last two weeks.

The bag’s old, canvas, and hanging on the coat hook by the front door. It’s faded, but you can still see the cross on the front flap. It was his grandfather’s during WWII, given to Len by David for Christmas one year in his teens. Len never knew his grandfather, or his grandmother, they had both died in ’62. The only reason David had survived was that he was being watched by relatives, who were then left to raise him.

Three vials, three syringes. They all feel heavy and cold in his hands, the syringes more so as they weigh down on him. The drugs alone, in small doses, aren’t even lethal when they’re separated. Half the time Len can use morphine, if the cancer moves fast enough and no morphine tolerance is built up. He’s had his dad on painkillers for months. It’d take too much to stop his heart.

The kitchen is quiet, the kettle still on the front burner from where Elise had made tea. The sun’s almost set, and Len has to switch the light on over the sink. Somehow, he’s not sure how, his hands don’t shake. They’re steady and sure as they measure out what he needs – and then stops at the last second.

The second two vials get thrown across the room, smashing on the pantry wall, the glass cracking as the liquid rolls down the pale yellow paint. Len grips the sink, breathing hard again, and cracks the syringes into the sink. He’s not going to be an executioner like this, like you’d kill a murder.

He goes back to the first vial, the first syringe, and ups the amount. He’ll have to clean up the mess he’s made of the kitchen later.

Elise is curled up next to David when Len gets back, one of his hands trailing through her hair, snagging his fingers from time to time. Elise looks like she’s been crying, and when she hears Len come in she places a hand over David’s heart, fingers splayed across his chest.

“How much morphine is that?” David asks, raising an eyebrow as Len sits back down.

“Thiopental,” Len mutters, reaching for the length of rubber tubing on the desktop and tying it around David’s arm as he makes a fist. David just nods in response.

Someone had switched on the floor lamp while Len was out of the room, and it makes everything vaguely yellow. It’s almost disturbingly easy for Len to find a vein, standing out blue against David’s skin.

“You ready?” Len asks, and David just nods, smiling down at Elise and pressing a kiss to her forehead. She lets out a shaky sigh, gripping David a little bit tighter. The needle goes in easy, just like always, and so does the thiopental. Len presses a thumb over the dot of blood that wells out of David’s arm after he pulls the syringe back, at the moment giving a flying _fuck you_ to proper procedures.

David grips Len’s hand, closing his eyes, and that’s when Elise starts crying again, not a noise coming from her, but her shoulders are heavy and there are tears tracking shiny paths down her face, her lips bit between her teeth. Len doesn’t move, almost like he’s afraid to. Eventually David’s grip goes loose, his breathing evening out and then slowing down, slower and slower until it stops all together. Len holds his own breath, so that the only noise in the room is Elise’s little shuddering sobs, sounding like they’re being forcibly pulled from her body.

The sun dips below the horizon as the day and David McCoy die together.

\---

Len has never felt empty in his life. He’s always _feeling_ something, Elise has always said that he’s got enough passion about pretty much everything and then some left over, and he’s not used to suddenly being so quiet. It’s like there’s nothing going on in his head, because there’s nothing to think. Nothing to feel. He’s numb.

They have a funeral of course, and just about the whole goddamn Town shows up. Everyone knows everyone, and there haven’t been too many funerals recently, so now when someone dies people cling to it for longer than they need to, make something of it. Len is polite, he’s not going to get angry at people in front of Elise, but after everyone clears out he stays in the old graveyard. No one knows if stone cutters even exist anymore, so each of the headstones dated after the 50’s are simple river stones, washed smooth by the creek and carved by whoever’s willing to do them. All they say are names and years, no fancy script or sayings or religious icons. A lot of people have given up on religion anyway. It’s nice to believe that God does exist, but people just can’t rationalize it with real life anymore. Len sure as hell was raised in a godless household, and he’s fine with that. He’s a fan of what you can feel, touch, see, reach and grab a hold of. Things like the way the grass feels under his feet when he takes his boots off, lets them hang from his fingers by the buckles, one for each hand.

The river stone over David’s grave is the darkest, not yet bleached by the sun. Len flops down next to it, running a hand over the smooth surface, snagging his fingernails in the cuts of _1957-2013_.

Gaila’s the one who comes looking for him when it starts to get dark. She’s wearing a simple sundress, loose and flowing, hiding her curves. Len still isn’t used to the fact that she’s grown up now. He’s stuck on her at 12, all coltish limbs and childish glee. She’s still got the glee, but it’s a more even sense of joy, less sparking and jumping and more rocking and rolling, like the tides.

Her dress is black, her hair tied up and back, and it washes out her pale skin, making her eyes almost glow. Len knows that she made the necklace that’s twisting against her chest, simple braided wire and green rocks and beads that jut off of it at odd angles. It’s gorgeous, rough and hurting.

“You made that,” he says simply as she sits down on the grass next to him, her dress riding over her knees and pooling in her lap. She runs her fingers over her hem, picking at a lose stitch.

“Yeah, last week,” she answers, and then looks up at him, nodding at his wrist. “You’ll need new ones soon.” Gaila’s been remaking his two thread bracelets for years now, and they’re starting to look grimy again. Any time they get gross enough he has to cut them off, or they fall off, Gaila’s there with exact replicas.

“Probably.” They sit in silence for a moment before Gaila shifts so that she’s facing him, taking his hands in her’s. She’s got narrow palms against his wide ones, but long fingers that mirror his. She works her thumb over a scar on the back of Len’s hand, almost faded with time, from some forgotten childhood accident that probably included Spock.

“Listen, I’m not about to say that I’m sorry, or that I know how you feel, because I’m neither.” Gaila reaches up to brush his hair out of his face before going back to gripping his hands, making him look at her. “I mean, I’m sorry that you had to go through this, but it’s an empty sorry, because nothing’s ever going to be able to convey what you went through. And of course I have no clue exactly what that was, or what it’s making you feel. But I am here, if you need someone to talk to. Hell, you can even yell at me, you know I won’t mind.”

“I’d never yell at you,” Len says quietly, squeezing her hands. “I only yell at Spock.” Gaila laughs at that, and the smile on her face almost makes Len smile.

“I know it’s how you show him affection,” Gaila giggles, winking at him. “You’ve got some interesting ways of loving people.”

“So I’ve been told,” Len murmurs. He doesn’t think he’s ever loved two people the same way, he’s always got a whole different mindset on how to deal with everyone in his life.

“Mourn him, but don’t let this drag you down. You still have your life, and I know David wouldn’t have liked you being distant and cold forever.”

“No one would probably like that. Although compared to my normal _charming_ personality, it’s got to be an improvement.” Len snorts, shaking his head, and Gaila frowns.

“Len, knock it off. You are kind of charming; I know I hate seeing you like this. I like it when you’re loud and obnoxious so much better.” Gaila suddenly leans forward, grabbing Len by the head to hug him. He pitches forward in surprise, finding himself face to face with Gaila’s chest.

“Gaila.” He clears his throat. “Your boobs are in my face.”

“Oh shut up, a lot of guys would kill to be in your current position.”

“I feel sort of like a cradle robber, honestly.” She lets him go with a laugh, that same one that reminds Len of wind chimes, and he has to admit that yes, Gaila is gorgeous. Gaila, in essence, is perfect, which is probably a large part why he’s never tried to make a move on her. Len’s kind of cracked and damaged at the edges, and he’d never inflict that on Gaila. She already knows about all his dirty little secrets, and he knows they’re both fine that they’re friends.

“So that didn’t cheer you up?” Gaila asks, standing up and offering out a hand to Len. There’s a twinkle in her eye, a smirk curled on her lips.

“It might have, just a little bit,” Len admits, hauling himself up. “And who are ‘a lot of guys,’ by the way?”

“I’m kidding, the only guy with their eye on me is this crazy guy who runs a chop shop in Atlanta, and that’s only because he wants me to go work for him.” Gaila doesn’t let go of Len’s hand, and they walk like that, fingers linked, Len digging his toes into the dry earth under his feet. Gaila starts humming eventually, some old song that Len can’t place but recognizes in an abstract sense.

“You love seeing me smile,” Len says eventually, when they’ve stopped because he’s not in a big hurry to walk though Town in bare feet. His boots are a bitch to get on, and he’s perched on a rock, wrestling with the laces and buckles. If they hadn’t held up all these years he would have ditched them a long while ago.

“I do, you should do it more often,” Gaila answers. “Life’s nothing without a little laughter.”

“Yeah,” Len murmurs, swallowing hard. Gaila had gotten the first smile out of him in a week.

They split off at Main Street, Gaila giving him one last hug, saying something with her eyes that Len can’t quite place but might be _you can survive this_ , and he walks the last bit home alone, even the crickets strangely quiet in the dark. He stops in front of the house, shoving his hands in his pockets and just staring at it. The only lights that are on are the ones in the kitchen, which he can see through the dark front room. Elise is probably up reading or drawing, waiting for Len to get home, waiting for another hour at the latest to get worried and go find him herself. He can picture her, cold and quiet because she doesn’t trust herself to speak without crying, sketching in charcoal, turning her fingertips black and grey. When she lived in San Francisco, before coming out here on a whim, she’d been a painter, working on murals across the destroyed city. Now she draws, fills up sketchbooks. There’s a whole shelf of them in David’s office, the spirals of the spines facing outward.

He eventually trudges up the porch steps, toeing open the screen door and then shouldering open the front door, unwilling to take his hands out of his pockets.

“I’m home,” he says when he gets to the kitchen, leaning in the doorframe. Sure enough, Elise is sketching, but in colored pencils. She’s drawing what looks like a coastline, but never one that Len has seen. It’s all gorgeous blues and greens, a real ocean, not like the sludge that rolls up on the dirty sand down South. Len’s only seen it once, dragged Spock down there on a whim when they were still teenagers, but he remembers how profoundly wrong it had seemed, the ocean wasn’t blue, the sand wasn’t yellow, the plants weren’t green. He’s always wondered if he’d get to see a real beach in his life.

“I’m glad,” Elise says, smiling tightly when she looks up. The curve of her lips is hard-set and doesn’t reach her eyes. “Want something to eat?”

“No, I’m-“ Len stops, because he’s about to say _I’m fine_ , which he’s not. “I’m not hungry.” 

Elise just sighs, but she offers up a little nod, and something draws Len away, and he walks down the hallway, dragging his fingers over the paint, watching his feet thud against the wood floors.

David’s office hasn’t been touched in a week. Elise hasn’t even been able to open the door, so the Dylan Thomas book had been moved from where Len had dropped it to right next to the door, as if a simple reminder to bring it somewhere or put it away. Len bends down and grabs it, flipping through the pages, like he’s expecting the book to have changed in some way.

It takes him a full couple of minutes with his hand on the doorknob for him to finally open the door, wincing when it creaks and squeaks. It’s almost pitch black, only the full moon coming through the open blinds offers up some light. He switches on the desk lamp, letting the light spill across the old leather top and pool on the ground. He sits down almost as an afterthought, the brass wheels on the chair clacking over the floor as he moves.

The office smells like wood and leather and old books, the same way it always has, and probably always will. Len used to love that smell, how it reminded him of learning and knowledge. Now it just reminds him of David, and he opens the top drawer to take his mind off of it, sorting through the pens and pencils, scissors and clips because he needs something to do with his hands. David hated writing in pen, claimed he hated how messy the ink was, so there are a whole fleet of sharpened pencils in little rows, some new and some worked down to almost their erasers, not much longer than Len’s thumb.

Len’s starting to feel like his skin isn’t fitting right, and he’s afraid this was a bad idea, almost ready to get up and rush out of the room when something on the desk catches his eye. He shuts the drawer quietly, and then looks at the old dictionary there. It’s always been there, as long as Len can remember, but the book stacked on top of it usually stays in the shelves, with the other medical textbooks that David had saved. It’s his copy of Gray’s Anatomy, smaller than the dictionary but still fairly thick, and Len reaches for it, wondering when David left it there.

It’s an old copy, and the dust jacket went missing years ago, but Len still loves it, mostly for the illustrations. David had always said that it was too detailed to work from, that it was easier just to use the textbooks actually intended for medical school, but Len still read it, over and over again. He flips open the front cover, and stops when he sees a note written in his father’s spidery handwriting that hadn’t been there before –

_March 30, 2013_  
 _For Len, always_

He runs his thumb over the words, wanting to get everything he can out of them, the way the pencil ate into the cover just that little tiny bit, leaving a barely there indentation. He sucks in a deep breath, lets it out as a long sigh, and then sits down for the rest of the night to read, Gray’s in his hands and the Dylan Thomas anthology resting by his elbow.

\---

_Wild men who caught and sang the sun in flight,_   
_And learn, too late, they grieved it on its way,_   
_Do not go gentle into that good night._

\---

Something, maybe finding the note from his dad, spurs Len into moving again, which translates into going through old things, capturing old memories that are lost to storage. It’s like sand slipping through his fingers, but the clinic has been quiet and he doesn’t have much else to do.

They’ve never really had an attic, but they’d always had too many bedrooms, so sometime before Len was born one of the spare rooms had been designated the storage room. It’s now crammed full of things – old furniture, boxes of patient records and books, just things saved or picked up from other places. Elise’s family was from out West, but because the McCoys had roots as twisting and deep as kudzu down in the South there’s also a fair amount of things from old relatives. He knows one whole trunk is nothing but clothes that David had managed to scrounge up from the house he was born in.

Those are the things that interest him – the memories that are deeper than others because they’re older, some of them not even his. Some just stories. Inside the trunk he finds a pile of dresses from the 30’s and 40’s, including a gorgeous wedding gown. The material flows out of the trunk, draping and falling across Len’s lap. It had probably been his grandmother’s. He knows from David that she’d married young, right before WWII, and had spent the whole damn war praying for her husband’s safe return.

There are notebooks full of notes Len had taken from Elise’s lessons, some of them focused and some of them haphazard and full of doodles of skeletons and dinosaurs in the margins as Len’s attention had waned and wavered over the years. His handwriting, sadly, hasn’t gotten much better.

He works on sorting through all sorts of junk for close to a month, interspersed with long shifts at the clinic, before Elise finally joins him one afternoon, two mugs of tea in her hands.

“I didn’t hear you get home,” Elise says as she sits down on an old trunk, folding her legs under her. She’s still tall and skinny, even though she’s almost 60, although there’s some grey finally creeping into her hair, riding out the waves of her bangs. “And you’ve got blood on you.”

“Huh?” Len looks up from the book he was reading to take the tea from Elise, frowning.

“On your shirt.” She nods at his t-shirt, and he pulls it out from his chest to see that he does indeed have blood on him, dried and smeared, probably from something brushing up against the fabric.

“Oh, I had to stitch up the McKenna’s kid, little monster sliced his palm all the way open,” Len grumbles. He’s been so focused lately – sleep, clinic, storage room – that Elise has had to remind him on a few occasions to eat, so he can’t say he’s surprised that he didn’t notice the blood. He’s just – he needs this. Needs something tactile to hang onto so that he doesn’t think too hard. It’s easy to ignore life when you’ve got a room full of the past right under your nose. It’s working, for right now. Even though he knows it’s not healthy.

“You need to get out of here,” Elise sighs finally, her cup cradled in her palms.

“Yeah, I know, I’m almost done organizing stuff,” Len mutters, tossing the book in a pile by his hip and reaching for another.

“No, I mean out of Alpharetta.” Elise has always referred to towns by their actual given names, instead of the way Len’s generation shorthands everything into “my Town” and “our Town.” Atlanta is about the only place they actually name check.

Len stares at her, frowning, trying to figure out what the hell Elise has just dropped on him. “You want me to leave?” He asks finally, carefully. “Like, leave home.”

“I don’t want you to leave, I don’t ever want to lose you. What I want you to do is see the world, experience something outside of just,” Elise waves her hand around for a second, almost like she can’t find the words, “here.”

“I’m not just going to _leave_ you,” Len snorts, returning to the books he’s got piled around him.

“Len, listen.” Elise sets down her tea, rubbing at her face. “I don’t want you to think that I’m kicking you out, that is the _last_ thing I would ever want to do. This’d be easier with the map.”

Len just blinks at her, confused at the sudden change of topic. Elise gets up, moving among boxes, reading labels (David was a big fan of labels), until she finds a flat, narrow box that looks more like a portfolio wedged between two stacks of garment boxes. With a cloud of dust she pulls it out in one smooth motion, coughing into the crook of her arm and rubbing at her eyes.

“God, this place just needs to be torched,” Elise jokes as she sits down next to Len, opening the clasps on the portfolio and pulling out the contents. It’s a lot of old drawings on large paper, yellowed with age, curling at the corners and the edges like a dead spider’s legs. Some are watercolor, others are pencil or charcoal, people and scenery moving throughout them.

“My friend Morgan had a camera, but I lost contact with her years ago, and who knows if she was even able to develop the film, so this is what I have.” She spreads out the first one across the top of the portfolio. It’s of the mountains, stark and jutting up above a ruined city, snow clinging to their upper reaches, the sky hazy.

“What are these from?” Len asks quietly, thumbing at the edge of the heavy paper and just staring.

“When I was young I grabbed two of my friends and drove from San Francisco to Washington D.C. I made them stop along the way for hours at a time to let me draw what I found.” Elise smirks, shaking her head. “And then I fell in love with a young, dashing doctor who was making supply runs up the coast and I’m sure you’ve heard the rest.”

“Young dashing doctor falls right back in love with the free spirited artist, they settle in the doctor’s old town and have an ill-tempered kid with a bad attitude. Who grows up to be even more unpleasant to be around.” Len can’t help it, he’s heard the story of how his parents found each other about a million times, but there’s still something so simple and gorgeous about it that he thinks it would make a good old movie, black and white, Elise with curls pilled on her head and in some dress with sensible heels, David in a suit with a proper tie and cufflinks and a boat of a car. The first time he’d envisioned it as a little kid it had been even more fanciful, some sort of romance masquerading as film noir.

“You are not ill-tempered,” Elise assures him, pulling some of his hair behind his ear and kissing his head. “You’re just strong-willed.” 

Len just rolls his eyes.

“So where was this?” He points to the picture in front of him and Elise smiles softly.

“Salt Lake City, facing the Rockies. It wasn’t bombed, but it had burned in the panic afterwards. Total ghost town, no one had made any effort to fix it up.” Elise flips to the next one, this one in watercolors. It’s a field, gold wheat pulled out of the ground by nature, sunlight and water, and reaching towards the clear sky, the only disturbance a dead tree in the right of the frame. It snakes and twines among itself, rough and angry, but so quiet without its leaves. “That’s Iowa. They still farm up there, what they can, but the soil’s gotten barren.”

The next drawing is downright haunting. Charcoal, and jagged, skittering across the paper, and Len’s seen enough photos to know that it’s what’s left of what was once the nation’s capital. Everything’s been flattened, although in the ruins there are chunks of domes and twisted statues. Everything but the Washington Monument, charred and missing blocks, but still standing like a solider after a battle.

“You could have died,” Len murmurs, running his fingertips across the bottom of the drawing. “D.C.’s radiation has always been bad.”

“We were stupid, but it didn’t kill us, somehow. We didn’t stay for long, and I’ll probably pay for it later in life, but we had to see what was left.”

Len chooses to not hear her last comment, refusing to even think about his mother going the same way his father had, and he keeps flipping through the pictures, seeing forests and swaths of long abandoned highway, old burned out houses and barns standing alone. The last thing in the pile is a map of the US, the states all different colors, each one labeled. One route, stretching across the country, is highlighted in yellow. Someone’s handwriting declares the end points to be _Home_ and _Where We’re Going_.

“This is what you should do,” Elise says softly, starting in Atlanta instead and then tracing up to the highlighted roads, following them to San Francisco. “You should see everything you’ve never had a chance to see before. You should experience all of these places, or go where you want to. But you shouldn’t be afraid to leave here.”

“I have a duty to this Town, I’m their doctor, I’ve got you – I am not going to leave you when dad’s just, he’s. I’m not leaving you.” Len balls his hands into fists, squeezing his eyes shut. He hasn’t cried yet, he’s not going to start now. Elise wraps her arms around his shoulders, letting him rest his head against hers.

“There are other doctors nearby, and I don’t want you to ever think you’re tied down here by me.” Elise takes a deep breath in. “There’s a world out there.”

“I know,” Len whispers, biting his tongue. “But no one’s got dad anymore.” 

“You don’t have to be him,” Elise says, sighing. “Be you.”

Len can’t even think of how to respond to that, so he just sags against Elise, his breath shaking as she tells him stories of the plains and the ocean, letting him imagine places that are worlds away from this dusty room packed with memories that aren’t his.

\---

Leaving with no intended date for a return trip isn’t something Len does. He’s never spent longer than a few nights out of Town, and even then he’s close. He’s still not sure he wants to do this, but something in his gut tells him he probably needs it. He hates that part of him.

His room has remained unchanged pretty much his whole life. The model planes that he and David had made when he was a kid are still hung on fishing line in one corner, still catch the rising sun every morning on the wings. His bookcases have gotten more packed over the years, and the few toys he had were moved to the spare room, but the curtains are still white and the bedding is still blue and there’s still a little mural above his closet. Elise had done it just after Len’s birth, and it’s a friendly little train speeding across the molding, each car carrying a different letter – _Leonard_. He had always felt painting over it would be like chipping away at some part of his mother, and the train had stayed. It’s childish, but it’s also part of him.

He’s leaving that train. Leaving all of his books, the gauzy curtains, the heavy quilt. Leaving the airplanes. The only things coming with him are clothes, other bare necessities he needs. Fresh water and spare hydro, because he doesn’t know where water stations are going to start popping up – something that Len can’t believe exists, but Elise swears that they do.

He’s bringing his med bag too. He probably won’t need anything in it, but the doctor part of his brain that he can never really shut off tells him that you never know when you might need to help someone, to fix them.

Standing in the middle of his room has never felt more surreal. It’s like he’s suddenly in another world, his desk cleaned of notebooks and papers and open books, everything put away where it’s technically supposed to go. His duffel’s down in the truck already, and his bag is slung across his chest, his version of a bandolier. It’s a comforting weight, reminding that he’s not leaving it all behind. He tugs at it before scrubbing a hand over his face, pinching the bridge of his nose. What he needs and what he wants have never been more at odd than they are at this moment.

The last thing he does before he shuts the door behind him is to grab two books laying on the edge of his desk – Thomas and Gray are coming with him. The poetry is slim enough that it fits into his bag, and he’s glad, almost like he doesn’t want Elise seeing it. He almost feels like he’s sneaking off with it in a way, so he clutches _Gray’s Anatomy_ against his side and takes the stairs by two, boots heavy on the wood of the old stairs. Just like always the bottom stair squeaks in protest when he puts weight on it.

Elise isn’t in the kitchen or the living room, and Len frowns, standing at a loss for a moment in the front hall before laughter floats in through the window. It almost makes him stop breathing – that’s Elise’s laugh. He hasn’t heard it in months, and it’s like a little burst of fireworks, momentarily the only thing he can hear.

He finds her out on the porch, in a simple pair of jeans and one of David’s old shirts, the cuffs rolled up to her elbows and the top two buttons undone, the tails hanging out. She’s barefoot, and possibly for the first time in his life Len realizes that he really does look like her – the way she stands, the way her lips twitch up at the corners when she smiles halfway. He’s always considered himself his father’s son. He was half wrong.

What’s even more confusing are the two women sitting on the steps, looking up at Elise, who’s leaning against the porch railing. Gaila’s already got her first sunburn of the summer going, the bridge of her nose and her high cheekbones red and dusted with freckles, her shoulders matching. Jocelyn looks like Jocelyn always does – like the summer forced into human form, warm skin and sun streaked hair. The last time he saw Jocelyn was months ago, at a wedding of all things. Clay had been with her. Had been for a while. He keeps telling himself it’s beyond irrational to be angry when he, for all intents and purposes, told them to get together.

“Gaila brought over a spare cell,” Elise says when he rocks on the top step, letting his toes hang over.

“I don’t trust the one you’ve got now,” Gaila laughs, standing up and dusting her jeans off. She’s got grease under her nails and over her fingers.

“You put it here,” Len mutters, raising an eyebrow, and Gaila just elbows him. “Promise not to get into too much trouble while I’m gone?”

“I can’t make any promises.” Gaila shrugs, and there’s a trickster glint in her eyes, like always. 

“Well, try,” Len says, rolling his eyes.

“Of course,” Gaila says, standing on her tiptoes and kissing Len on the cheek. He tugs on a lock of her hair and she gives him one last elbow to the ribs for good measure before saluting him. “Try not to get lost or bend an axel in a pot hole.”

“Oh trust me, I plan on doing just that,” Len assures her, and she wraps him up in a hug one last time, her hair catching in the wind. She turns to leave, but then stops for a moment, pulling something out of her pocket. It’s a new bracelet – not like his normal ones, she remade those for him a week or so back – yellow and gold with blue beads strung and wrapped into the thread.

“For the open road,” she tells him, and then she jumps down the stairs, offering a little wave back before slouching across the yard, her hands in her pockets.

“I’m gonna miss that girl,” Len mutters as the three of them watch her go. Jocelyn offers him a tight smile and goes to follow Gaila without a word. Len frowns, opening his mouth to say something, but Elise catches his wrist instead.

“Get word to me somehow when you get there?” Elise had already said her goodbyes, they’ve been saying them for days now. Len just nods and she reaches up, tracing the bridge of his nose, something she hasn’t done since he was a child and she wanted to get his attention to make a point.

“I’ll miss you,” he says quietly, and Elise sighs, taking his hand in hers.

“You have your map?” Len holds up the book in his hands, showing where the map is tucked safely among the pages, sticking up just slightly.

“Pretty sure it’s your map,” he murmurs, and Elise squeezes his hand before letting it go.

“Not anymore. It’s yours now. Follow her, and you’ll end up where you need to go,” Elise says. “Stay safe.”

All he can manage is a tight nod, and then before he can change his mind he tears down the steps, scuffing up the dust in the front yard, and when he looks up he sees Jocelyn leaning against the driver’s side door, twisting her hair around a finger.

“I-” He’s not sure what to say, so he’s happy when Jocelyn cuts him off by pulling him closer. They stare at each other for a long moment before he reaches through the open window to let the book thump to the seat and then he cups her face in his hands, letting her meet him halfway. She tastes like lemonade and the green tea she always drinks, her lips dry in the heat like everyone else’s. There’s nothing chaste about the kiss, and everything about it that calls to mind six years ago on the Darnell’s kitchen floor. They kiss like they’re drowning.

“Clay asked me to marry him last night,” Jocelyn says when they pull apart, her arms still wrapped around his waist and his hands still on her skin.

“You said yes.” He already knows, somehow. Jocelyn just nods. Len knows he should feel bad that he just kissed someone who’s engaged, but he can’t.

“We never would have worked,” she says.

“We’re too similar.”

“We wouldn’t have lasted past 30.”

Len laughs at that, shaking his head in some sort of bitter amusement. 

“That’s generous, I would have only given us until 28.”

Jocelyn rolls her eyes, and shoves him back a bit, but she’s smirking.

“Go get out there cowboy, you’ve got a country to drive,” she laughs, and they untangle themselves.

“Pretty sure I’m a doctor, not a cowboy,” he says as Jocelyn steps backwards a few paces, letting her arms swing. 

“You’d look good in the hat, give it some thought.”

“Please, I always look good.”

“Yeah, you do,” Jocelyn says simply and then gives him one last sigh and simple smile.

“You too,” Len says, and he’s wondering if they’re saying more than that, and she waves, still walking backwards until she finally has to watch where she’s going. He watches her go, shading his eyes against the sun, until the noise of someone opening the door to the truck makes him snap his head around.

Spock is situating himself in the passenger seat, buckling in.

“Oh _hell_ no,” Len growls, and Spock looks up, looking quite serene.

“You need a friend. Also, someone who can navigate for you, which I believe I can be quite good at.” He folds his hands in his lap.

“Get the fuck out of my truck.”

“No.”

“Spock, I swear to god I’ll –”

“Unless you remove me from the truck by actual physical force, I’m going nowhere.”

They have a stare off for a second, one of Spock’s stupidly elegant eyebrows raised before Len kicks at the front tire and then gets in, slamming the door behind him and shoving _Gray’s Anatomy_ at Spock with a blue streak and then some. He probably guns the ignition with just a bit too much force, but Spock just stays neutral, the bastard, as Len rants at him all the way out of town.

\---

Spock is, thankfully, oddly silent. The man is stoic to a fault, but he usually has something on his mind, and his way of dealing with that is puzzling about it out loud, using the nearest person as a sounding board, even if they’re only half paying attention. (Or not paying attention much at all, in Len’s case.) Topics of conversation for him range from scientific topics – usually physics – to metaphysical treatises on life that make Len’s head spin. Len is by no means a simple person, but he views life the way he can touch and see it – the dry dust under his feet, the crab grass in the front yard, the Nichol’s orchard, the people that inhabit his life and how they relate to him. Spock, on the other hand, is all about the unseen and the half proven and how he’d like to make those things concrete, one way or another. He believes in using logic to make sense of the greater scope of the world. Len’s ok with his scope only being what’s right in front of him.

When they pass an old, decrepit sign that proclaims “Welcome to Chattanooga!” in bubbly letters long ago dulled by the sun and the grit, Spock slips the map out from the pages it’s pressed between, unfolding the creases carefully with his unnaturally long fingers. In the tea shop in Town there had been an old piano pushed up against one of the walls and Amanda had taught Spock how to play, and now Spock’s large, pale hands always remind Len of the black and white keys on the piano.

“I believe we’ve just entered Tennessee,” Spock says quietly, as if he’s afraid speaking too loudly will cause Len to pull over and kick him out of the car.

“That’s a state, right?” Len asks, squinting in the rising sun. It’s actually kind of pretty up here – the flat, scorched earth around Atlanta had given way to softly rolling hills, gentle and green, early morning fog still trapped between some of them, mostly faded.

“It was, yes,” Spock answers, and he holds the map up, half resting it against the dash. “I don’t believe this map shows the most direct route.”

“It doesn’t, we go almost straight north for a while. I – uh. I just liked the route that was on the map.” Len shrugs, not wanting to go into the whole story that he’s following his mother, but in reverse. “We’ll join up with the old highlighted route eventually.”

“I’ve never been this far inland,” Spock mutters, peering at the map and checking distances with his thumb against the little mileage marker in the corner.

“Pittsburgh isn’t this far in?” Len’s never been there, only knows it as this theoretical place that Spock had lived in for the first six years of his life.

“No, not according to this map. It’s close, however.” Spock continues tracing things, and they lapse into silence, at least until Spock decides that he wants to stir shit up.

“Do you still feel... emotionally unsettled?” Spock looks up at Len, who stares at him out of the corner of his eyes, most of his attention on the road. The highways have long since fallen into disrepair, and if you don’t pay attention you’ll end up fucking your car up in a crack or a pothole the size of Kansas. Not that Len knows how big, or even quite where Kansas is, but that’s what Elise used to say. Potholes the size of Kansas.

“Emotionally unsettled,” Len replies flatly, pursing his lips.

“I’ve never lost someone close to me, so I’m not correctly informed on how to-” 

“Spock, shut up.”

“It was just a question.”

“Yes, I am still fucked up. Leave it, or this is going to be one _insanely_ unhappy trip.” Len’s developed a habit of growling lately. He’s not sure where it came from, but seemingly speaking lowly through clenched teeth is now his default way of communication.

“I was hoping the trip could help you heal,” Spock admits softly. “I don’t mean to presume that I could help, but the growth that comes with such a trip could clear your mind.”

“Spock-” Len sighs, changing lanes to avoid a crack in the blacktop. “Look, I know I’m a shitty friend and a bastard right now, but – yeah. I’ve got you. Or something. Whatever.” He’s gone back to growling again, slouching in his seat and thinking about flooring the truck out of anger. It wouldn’t get them anywhere, except maybe with a burned out fuel cell.

When Len stops chewing on his tongue in anger for admitting that he might actually need Spock at the moment, he chances a sidelong look at him, and is shocked to find Spock actually _smiling_. Well, in his own soft, quiet way. Len shakes his head and sticks an elbow out the window.

The roads down this far South are empty of any other traffic, just them rattling along in the old truck. Every once and a while they’ll pass an abandoned car, pulled over to the side of the road and rusted out or stripped of its tires. From time to time Spock will point out a species of bird he can identify or Len will curse at the road, but that’s it for conversation. It’s like they’re the only living souls on the Earth, save for the birds.

Len nearly drives off the road in shock when they pass a sign saying they’ve just entered Illinois, staring at the station off the side of the highway. There are cars in the parking lot, and a few people sitting on the hood of one stare as they drive past.

“Was that-”

“A water station? I believe so.” Spock is still looking at it through the back window, twisted around at an unnatural angle with his nose pressed to the glass. “They also appear to be offering hydro.”

“No fucking way,” Len murmurs. Water’s hard to come by since the South went dry and the coast got fucked. Atlanta’s main water supply before life had gone to shit was only there because of a man made dam that was destroyed in ’62. Len’s lived his whole life just assuming rationing water for household use and hydro production was how you got by. But here, clear as day, they don’t seem to have that issue.

“Fascinating,” Spock agrees before finally sitting all the way back down. “The amount of fresh water they must have in the North is – I mean, it’s staggering to even make an approximation.”

“I honestly thought water stations were a myth or something. Goddamn, that’s crazy.” Len shakes his head. 

“Do you think they have food, too?” Spock asks.

“You think my mother let me leave without food? There are sandwiches and apples in my bag.” Len shakes his head. “Elise wouldn’t let me get five feet away from her unless she knew I was going to be well fed, wherever I was going.”

Spock digs the food in question out of Len’s bag, and it’s only when Spock makes a comment about Elise having packed vegetarian for Spock that Len realizes this was _totally_ a set up. Of course. Why did he even think Elise and Amanda would let him leave without Spock?

“Goddamn our mothers,” Len mutters, and Spock just looks over at him with a raised eyebrow before going to town on his sandwich.

\---

The sun’s heading down, spreading color across the sky, and Len’s feeling every hour of the day, every mile of the road. He’s never driven this much in one sitting in his life, and his shoulders are stiff and his eyes are tired. He cracks his neck and Spock looks over at him, frowning.

“I apologize that I don’t know how to drive,” Spock says, folding his hands over the map, which he’s still got resting on his legs.

“We might have to fix that,” Len mutters. Having someone to trade off with for the rest of the trip would be a big improvement. “You can build a fuel cell, I think you can deal with a stick shift.”

“It would stand to reason that I would find the process easy,” Spock says, looking out the window. “We should stop for the night soon.”

“You’re the one with the map, what’s coming up in the next bit?” Spock unfolds the map, holding it up and murmuring to himself.

“Iowa City is the next large city, however, in the interest of staying out of crowded areas it might be a good idea to stop before that. There’s a small town not to far south of it.”

“Well, let’s hope that map’s still accurate.” Len revs the car and shifts up, tacking ten miles an hour onto the speedometer. He’s worried about when they’re going to start seeing locals, people with guns who don’t want outsiders. Their Town was always odd for being welcoming and willing to forge alliances with other Towns in the area, but they’ve all heard stories of whole cities run by Drifters who shoot first and ask questions later. Once, when Len was a kid, a Drifter had limped into town in his cobbled together car and pulled a gun on Robert April and Herb. Luckily Herb had been faster on the draw, but shit like that didn’t happen very often and it stuck with Len for years. They’ve always been peaceful, Len doesn’t even know how to shoot a gun.

“There’s a hitchhiker up ahead,” Spock says suddenly, and Len looks up, squinting. He hasn’t switched on the lights yet because he doesn’t want to use the power, but now he’s got no choice. The high beams illuminate the cragged roadway ahead of them, and indeed, a slim figure a bit off, waving their arms over their head. A shined up bike is standing next to the person, reflecting the headlights and glinting red and yellow in the deep sunset.

“We’re not-“

“I think we should.” 

“ _Spock_.”

“It would be the best course of action.” Spock’s still glued on the person, and Len knows he’s got to be seeing something that Len hasn’t noticed yet – Spock’s got insanely good eyesight, has to be better than 20/20. Like many things about Spock, it annoys Len to some degree.

“My car, my rules.”

“Actually, it’s your family’s truck, and therefore it would suggest that, as they allow you to use it, it is closer to a democracy than a dictatorship, although that is a rough metaphor lacking in actual evidence.”

“Oh my god, you goddamn fucking encyclopedia, my mom gave the car to me, and-” 

“Pull over, please.”

Len mutters and bitches, but he does it, because he’s half interested to figure out why Spock is so stuck on picking up one measly hitchhiker. The other half is afraid it’s a drifter who’s going to kill them and then steal the truck, which Len has gotten kind of attached to.

The wheels throw up dust from the shoulder, kicking rocks under the spinning rubber, and when they finally stop the person walks over, straying into the headlights for a second in the process, and Len gets one brief glimpse of a tall, thin woman with a gorgeous face, high cheekbones and spark eyes. Len is never letting Spock forget this – the man wanted to pull over because he thought someone was _hot_. Len’s still trying to keep a straight face about this when she leans on the open passenger window, looking at both of them like she’s got x-ray vision.

“Can we be of assistance?” Spock asks, sitting up a bit straighter and squaring his shoulders. Len smothers his bark of laughter in a cough.

“Depends, where are you headed?” She’s got a melodic voice, and Len would be lying if he said he wasn’t attracted to her, in the vague sense that she was drop dead gorgeous and wearing a leather motorcycle jacket.

“Into Riverside for the night,” Spock answers, sounding extremely sure of himself. Len can’t remember Spock showing interest in another human being like this _ever_. Except the one night years and years ago when Spock kissed him, but that was clearly more of an experiment than anything.

“Well then if you don’t mind, could I catch a ride with you guys? My bike quit, so I’m kind of stranded.” She steps back as Spock suddenly opens the door, offering his seat to her like it’s a chariot, and Len rolls his eyes. “Oh, uh -”

“Leonard and I can put your motorcycle in the back,” Spock assures her, and she puts her hands on her hips.

“Oh hell no, you’re going to need my help, that bike is a heavy son of a bitch.” Spock opens his mouth to argue and she shakes her head, holding up a hand. “Trust me, I know this stuff.”

“Well, let’s help the lady,” Len laughs, getting out and moving around the truck to slap Spock on the shoulder. He’s suddenly enjoying this night immensely, if only because Spock is in love, at first sight, with a take-no-shit kind of girl. He likes her.

Spock looks put out for a second until he scrambles into action, opening the tailgate and then rushing to help them wheel the bike over and heft it into the truck bed. It takes some work, the girl was right – the thing _is_ a heavy son of a bitch – but eventually it’s wedged in safe. Spock insists on offering her his seat, but he loses in the end, and she curls up in the back, hanging onto the back window which Spock had slid open for her.

“So you’re Leonard?” She asks, and Len heaves a sigh.

“I’m _Len_. That’s Spock.” He jerks a thumb at Spock. “And you are?”

“Uhura,” she answers, and sticks a hand into the cab for Spock to shake. “You from around here?”

“We’re from the South,” Spock says, and Uhura raises her eyebrows. She’s reflected in the rearview mirror, just barely in the low light.

“I thought it was a wasteland down there,” she says, whistling long and low. 

“It is,” Len mutters. “But we like it.”

“And where are you from?” Spock asks, looking back at Uhura in the same twisted up way he was staring at the water station.

“Everywhere. My parents never really settled, raised us on the road. They were architects, always helping people rebuild.” Uhura’s voice is gentle, raised just over the hum of the engine and the run of the tires. 

As the last light of the day slips into night she and Spock keep up a running conversation, and Len just listens, trying not to laugh at Spock’s awkward idea of what women want to talk about. Len’s pretty sure that Spock was instructed in the art of wooing by one Jane Austen and not much else.

Riverside creeps up on them, a smattering of lights off the highway. They trundle through the town, but no one’s really out. There’s still a little Post Office that claims it’s now the home of the local law that looks like it’s operational, although the lights are off for the night.

“There’s a sign on the door,” Uhura points out, and Len stops so that she can jump out to read it and then come back, swinging back into the truck. “54 4th Street.”

“Where the hell is that?” Len mutters, but they turn up the main street until 4th Street shows up, and they head the wrong way for a block before having to pull a U-turn. 54 4th Street turns out to be a grand old farmhouse, whitewashed with grey-blue shutters and a wide front porch. There’s a light on at the back of the house and the carriage lamp out front is on. The sign hanging off of it just says _Kirk_.

Len parks behind what seems to be a hand built car, some off road vehicle that’s splattered in mud on either side, garish against the shiny black paint.

“So do we just... knock?” Uhura asks as they cross the front yard. “I’ve never actually done this before.”

“People used to come through Town every once and a while, and they’d always end up at Herb’s,” Len answers, shrugging. 

“Herb was the local police chief,” Spock supplies, and Uhura just nods with a little ‘ah.’

The front door is a darker version of the shutters, and there’s an old-fashioned knocker mounted on it in the shape of a lion’s head. It feels heavy under Len’s hand, worn smooth by years of use, and it’s louder than he expected. The front window is open, letting the cool summer night air in, and he can hear the sound of someone washing dishes.

“Jim, can you get the door?” A voice floats through the window, a woman, and there’s an answer ‘yes’ from someone, almost too soft to hear. A chair scrapes, lights flick on, and footsteps echo off a wood floor.

Len’s not prepared for the boy who opens the door. He’s tall, sun kissed in that same way Gaila always was, with red and freckles dusting his nose, although his arms are tan. He’s also dangerously pretty in a way that’s eerily like Jocelyn, right down to the painfully blue eyes.

“You guys passing through?” he asks, running a hand through his hair and making it stick up at odd angles.

“We are,” Spock answers, and the boy steps aside, ushering them in and then leading them through the house. Len’s glued to the kid – he’s _gorgeous_ , carries himself effortlessly, all easy farm boy charm that Len’s not sure what to do with.

For the first time in god knows how long, Len wants nothing more than to make the kid’s skin sing under his hands, wants to make him bend and break in all sorts of perfect ways, and then put him back together again with the tips of his fingers and the breadth of his lips. 

\---

It turns out that the woman Len had heard was one Winona Kirk, mother to Jim. She insists they all sit down, and she’s got the kind of air about her that suggests arguing with her is the very wrong thing to do. She’s sharp on the edges, like a knife, but there’s something still inherently caring about her despite it. When she smiles she does so larger than life, laughs the same way, but none of that mirth ever makes it to her eyes, which stay hard and cold.

Jim’s perched on the counter, his hands tucked under his legs and his shoulders hunched. Len’s trying to figure out how old he actually is – he looks like he can’t be much older than 18 if that, but he carries his body like he’s seen every world weary corner of the globe. Len’s also trying to figure out if the glances that Jim keeps leveling at him are _supposed_ to be that suggestive in an up-through-the-eyelashes way or if Len’s just projecting at this point. Either way, the kid does have gorgeously long eyelashes.

Winona’s telling them – well, Spock, mostly – about the water stations (he’d asked) when the back door snaps open and a middle-aged man strides in, Wellington’s muddy and cheeks windblown.

“Travelers?” He asks as he kicks his boots off, nodding at them. Len’s inclined, if only because of the crystal blue eyes, to say that he’s Jim’s father, but that’s about where the similarities end, and he moves around the kitchen, and around Winona in particular, more like they’re siblings. Even Sarek and Amanda would trade little glancing touches, and they were notoriously private.

“Only staying the night, Sir,” Uhura assures him as he takes the fourth seat at the table, folding his hands on the scared wood top.

“I’m Christopher Pike, the closest thing this place has to the police. You’re welcome to the spare bedrooms,” he says, smiling. “But you better be up for breakfast, Winona makes a mean pancake.”

“I even make more than one some days,” Winona laughs, shaking her head. “Chris, you want some tea before you turn in?”

“Nope, it’s been a long day. We had to work an unnecessary amount to catch Robau’s horses. The fence broke this morning and my back’s starting to feel like it’s going the same way.” Pike stands up, offering up a goodnight before he disappears down the hall.

“I think I’m headed the same way,” Winona says, hanging up the dishtowel she’s been using. “But make sure to be up for breakfast. Jim’ll show you where you’re sleeping.”

There’s an awkward silence after Winona leaves, and Jim fiddles for a second before jumping down off the counter. His shirt rides up in the motion, exposing a strip of pale skin across his stomach that the sun hasn’t gotten to yet.

“Uh, so yeah. There’s a bedroom through the living room –“ Jim waves in the general direction “- and one up the stairs, first door on the left. You guys can figure it out, I’m gonna go get something out of the barn.”

“Flighty kid,” Uhura mutters after he sneaks out the back door, only pausing long enough to shove a pair of sneakers on his feet.

“Flirty,” Len corrects with a mutter. Everything Jim had done was deliberate, and he’d been giving Len those glances all evening. He stands up, and his chair scrapes rather loudly in the quiet house, almost making him wince. “You guys can take the bedrooms, I’ve got to go deal - I’ve. Whatever.”

“You have no idea where you’re going,” Spock points out as Len opens the back door, and he shrugs, glancing over his shoulder just long enough to see Spock looking very confused and Uhura smirking like she knows exactly what he’s about to do. Which is good, because he sure as hell doesn’t, so at least someone does.

The light spilling out of the kitchen only crosses the back porch, and then it’s almost pure blackness, lit only by the moon and any ambient glow the house is throwing off.

Len drags his feet through the sparse grass and dirt, across the yard towards the hulking dark structure that has to be a barn. A normal sized door next to the large main rolling one is cracked open, letting yellow light out in a strip across the dusty yard. There’s a motorcycle parked by the side of the barn, illuminated by the light from the open door. Instead of heading directly for the barn he goes to the bike, curious about it. The only thing he’s ever driven was the truck and the Grayson’s little hatchback, David had always been vehemently against motorcycles and Len had never felt a need to rebel against it. However, the bike looks powerful, and he runs a hand over the handles, down across the body, stopping to press his palm against the black of the leather of the seat. While Uhura’s bike had looked like it was made to go to war, this one is more up to speed for a chariot race, slim and powerful.

He hears the door creak behind him and he looks up to see Jim in the door, one hand resting on the crossbeam on the inside of it, fingers curled loosely around the wood.

“You like her?” Jim asks, nodding at the bike, and Len shrugs. 

“I don’t know much about motorcycles,” he admits.

“Well, if you only know one thing, it should be that she’s the best bike you can still get. Pretty much the only one to hold up from the early 60’s, and that illegal stuff people smuggle in from Canada tends to be crap.” Jim opens the door a bit wider, and it looks a whole hell of a lot like an invitation when he shuffles backwards, like he’s waiting for Len to follow him.

“All we ever get from Canada are tape decks and surgical equipment,” Len mutters, kicking the door open all the way and following Jim into the barn. Len was expecting farm equipment and hay, but it actually seems to be a lot of storage, cars, and discarded mechanical parts. There is a tractor, but it doesn’t look like still runs. The only lights are the low ones far overhead, casting that yellow glow over everything and making Jim’s hair look like it’s gilded.

“Look, kid-”

 “If you want to make a speech first to make yourself feel better, go ahead,” Jim cuts him off, shrugging.

“How old are you actually?” Len growls, kicking at the ground and shoving his hands in his pockets. “Because I can’t tell if you’re a snot nosed brat or a precocious moron.”

“I’m 20.” Len was expecting 18, and he’s not sure he believes it. He also can’t exactly give Jim a speech about being _too young_ when Len was caught up between Clay and Jocelyn at that age. Not that Jim knows that to call him out on being a hypocrite.

“You’re still a kid,” Len mutters, and then, after a beat, “fuck it.”

He walks Jim backwards until Jim’s legs hit one of the front wheels of the disused tractor, and up this close Len can see just how many freckles Jim has, can see every last inch of the determined set of his mouth.

“I wouldn’t have done anything if you hadn’t been undressing me with your eyes since I opened the front door,” Jim points out, licking his lips, and Len frowns, but before he can snipe back Jim kisses him, strong and so sure that there’s no question that Jim knows exactly what he’s doing, what he has been doing. Len snakes a hand around to cup the back of Jim’s head, the other one anchored against Jim’s hip like a lifeline to his warm skin. Every inch of Jim is coiled and controlled, at least until Len moves his hand far enough up to thumb over a nipple, and just like that part of Jim cracks, shivers, and Jim opens his mouth wider against Len’s, whimpering into what’s fast gone from a kiss to a battle. Jim shoves his hands into Len’s back pockets, pulling their bodies together, and Len swears there are sparks on his skin when his hips slot up with Jim’s.

Jim is pure energy under his palms, warm against his chest, his lips, and he breathes out, lets Jim breathe him in, Jim’s eyelashes fluttering against Len’s face. They catch and grind together, and Len spares one brief thought about how quiet his brain is for once, nothing but _want_ and _please_ , and he can’t help the moan that Jim pulls out of his throat when he moves a hand around to work open Len’s belt. Metal clinks against metal as Jim works at their pants, and Len has to plant a hand against the side of the tractor, the steel grimy under his palm, to stay upright.

“You’re tan everywhere,” Jim notes with a bit of breathless amusement against Len’s ear, his voice coming in little puffs when he shoves Len’s shirt up and his pants down, palm pressed flat against Len’s lower stomach, his fingers pointing down and getting lower.

“You’re just really damn pale,” Len manages to pant back, and then he’s a little more worried about licking at the shell of Jim’s ear, pulling at it when Jim wraps a hand around him, long fingers dancing across his skin. Len rolls into Jim’s hand like he’s got spring winds at his back and a long, broken sound lurches out of his throat, caught up in the sensation and just _feeling_ and nothing but it in months. It’s gorgeous and it’s perfect and it hurts, and Len squeezes his eyes shut, panting into the juncture of Jim’s shoulder and neck. He’s not quite prepared for it when Jim takes them both together, sliding together just a bit too rough, but right now Len doesn’t care, just needs. He bites down on that skin, sucking, and Jim’s head tips to the side, murmuring god knows what as he works them over together, his fingers taking Len apart at the seams like he’s pulling thread straight out of Len’s skin.

He’s still got one hand in Jim’s hair, and he curls his fingers in the short stands, rolling his hips again, and when something slips together just so Jim’s suddenly the one to buck forward, a string of _fuck fuck fuck_ falling from his mouth, and without much thought, just because it feels right, Len tilts his head up to kiss those words away, letting Jim pant into his mouth, and he reaches down to cover Jim’s hand with his own, moving just a little bit faster.

Len can feel his whole body coiling, his toes curling, and Jim sucks on his bottom lip, pulls back to let his breath rush out of his body in harsh gasps as they both spiral, start to crack.

“Fuck, _please_ -” Len’s startled by the fact that he can still talk, and Jim just speeds up, Len going along with it, until something bursts at the back of his head and the base of his spine and he comes crashing undone, fingers scrabbling against the side of the tractor as he slumps against Jim, sucking in air through his nose like he’s not sure he remembers how to breathe. He lets his head hang, his eyes flutter shut, and listens to Jim go from panting to breathing normally, low and almost silent.

They end up sliding to the ground, and Jim takes Len’s hand, staring him straight in the eye as he pops Len’s fingers into his mouth one by one, cleaning them off and making Len whine at the back of his throat. Jim doing the same to his own hand just makes Len press, scatter kisses against his neck and jaw, both of them tangled beyond moving.

Len’s honestly not surprised when Jim drags him up into the loft, lets his body fall onto the mattress Jim’s got up there, and spends the next few hours enjoying his new found ability to just forget and instead marvel at the body under his hands.

\---

Len’s never remembered his dreams as an adult. They stopped sticking with him into waking a good ten years ago, and now the only indication he even still dreams is when something snaps him awake, a nightmare curling at the back of his head like nothing more than mist. It’s been happening almost every morning, bright and early, since David died. It’s never anything bad, but it’s sudden, and he’s always left staring at his bedroom ceiling trying to figure out what’s in his head.

For once, that doesn’t happen this morning. He wakes up slowly, still early because his body’s just conditioned to it at this point, breathing slowly and evenly. He’s also almost instantly confused. The old quilt tucked around his waist isn’t new, but the heavy arm draped there sure is. He cracks an eye open, finding himself facing a blank wood wall, dust filtering through early morning light in the air. Craning his head back, he can see a small diamond shaped window, pushed open slightly like someone was letting the breeze in.

_Jim_. He’s in the Kirk’s barn. He groans, scrubbing at his face with his hands and grimacing. He’s officially the stupidest person on the planet when it comes to taking comfort in someone else’s body – he should have known that when he went and kissed someone else’s fiancé yesterday.

Yesterday certainly takes the cake for bad decisions.

He rolls up into a sitting position, letting his shoulders slump as he blinks the sleep out of his eyes. The barn is quiet and cool this early in the morning, the only light coming in through the few windows in the loft. It’s early enough that the sunlight is weak, the sun’s probably only been up for an hour or so. And if his memory serves correctly, that means he hasn’t even gotten more than four hours of sleep. He’s inclined to trust his memory, considering it’s telling him that Jim bends in amazing ways, and that they tested just how flexible he was all damn night.

He’s sore in places he didn’t think he could be sore, he’s got a couple of impressive bite marks on his hips (Jim’s got a matching set scattered across his shoulders) and he doesn’t even want to know what his hair looks like. He tugs some of it behind his ears, wrinkling his nose when he runs a hand through it to find that it’s knotted and stiff. Once upon a time he had teased Clay about how much of a disaster his hair got, back when Len was still doing the respectable thing and keeping his hair short, so he supposes it’s only karma.

Jim stirs when Len disentangles himself from the limbs he’s thrown every which way – the kid looks more octopus than human at the moment – and he bites his bottom lip, hovering on the edge of the mattress and letting out a low breath when Jim just drops back into sleep.

His boxers are such a disaster that he just shoves them into the one of his boots that he can find, pulling on his jeans and going in search of the other boot and his shirt and belt. He’s standing at the edge of the loft, rubbing the back of his neck and still wearing nothing but his jeans when Jim decides to wake up all the way.

“You look like something out of a porno right now,” Jim’s voice floats his way, and Len whips around to see him propped up on his elbows, the quilt far enough down that it’s displaying an impressive amount of ass. Jim sort of looks like sin incarnate at the moment, and it’s doing funny things to Len’s guilt ridden brain.

“Huh?” Len asks, suddenly feeling like he’s still naked. Jim’s got one hell of gaze when he wants too.

“Jeans riding deliciously low, no shirt, hair going every which way to Tuesday, combat boots. It’s a good look for you.” Jim makes a vague gesture in Len’s direction, smirking.

“Jungle boots,” Len says, because he’s going to concentrate on that. “Combat boots are – forget it. Where’s my other one?”

“Probably over by the ladder,” Jim says, actually being helpful as he stretches out of bed, holding the quilt like a long skirt around his waist, letting it trail across the floor behind him.

Len finds it hiding behind a toolkit tucked by the wall, and when he stands back up from grabbing it he nearly jumps backwards – Jim’s suddenly right there, so far in his personal space that it’s no longer his. Jim looks neutral, although in a decidedly tough way, like you could read the Riot Act through a bullhorn and he wouldn’t budge, just stay there.

“So, you guys are going to San Francisco?” That’s not what Len was expecting to come out of Jim’s mouth, so his jaw is somewhat unhinged when Jim swoops into kiss him, and Len growls against his lips, kissing him back for a moment before putting a palm against Jim’s sternum, pushing him back.

“Yeah, we are,” he mutters, clearing his throat. Jim just keeps staring at him like he’s trying to read his mind.

“Just got bored?”

 “My mom kicked me out.”

 “Yeah, for what?”

Len’s suddenly had enough of Jim’s eyes.

“For killing my dad, goddamn it kid, would you stop fucking _staring_ at me?” It gets the desired effect, Jim blinks in confusion, and it looks like it takes a couple seconds for that to catch up with him. Saying the words also makes Len want to jump out of the loft and he turns his head to the side, away from Jim, sealing his lips together in a thin line.

“You did so not kill you dad,” Jim murmurs, and he reaches up to grab Len’s chin, forcing him to look back forward. “Why are you going to San Francisco?”

“My mom told me to, I explained this already,” Len growls, and pries Jim’s fingers off his chin. 

“So you’re just driving clear across the country because your mom just up and _told_ you to?” 

“You got an issue with that?”

“Well, besides the fact that it’s bullshit, no.”

 Len lets out a bark of surprised laughter, and it startles Jim, making him twitch.

“God, I wish it was that simple,” Len mutters, shaking his head. He’s also suddenly aware that he’s still gripping Jim’s hand, and that they’re having his conversation mostly naked. It’s beyond surreal. They’re still standing close enough that Len can feel Jim’s body heat against his bare chest, and he can’t help it, he just reaches out to cup Jim’s neck, brushing his thumb over the stubble making Jim’s jaw rough. This is what he always does – reaches out for people, needs to touch them. He grounds himself with other people. It’s something Elise had always done too, although she’d done it differently, not in this wild, unknowing way that Len does it. If he weren’t so good at figuring people out, he’d be fucking terrible at it.

“Guess I’m not the only one with parental issues,” Jim tries to joke, one corner of his lips twitching.

“Just daddy issues,” Len half jokes back, and that gets an actual smile out of Jim, and just like that suddenly Len can look Jim in the eye again. He’s softened up a bit, his smile starting to reach all the way up to his eyes.

This time he’s not surprised when Jim kisses him, and he drops his boots so that he can run his hands up Jim’s bare sides, rest them against his hips, just over the edge of the quilt that Jim’s still holding up with his free hand. The other hand is busy working at Len’s jeans, and Len moans against Jim’s mouth, pulling them almost flush together, just far enough that Jim can get a hand between them.

Len nearly has a goddamn fucking heart attack when someone clears their throat, rather loudly, down on the main level of the barn. Jim and Len jump apart, Jim scrabbling at the quilt and Len frantically trying to make sure his jeans aren’t going to slip right off his hips.

“I thought I’d come find you before Winona did.” Christopher Pike is standing, arms crossed, in the middle of the barn, one eyebrow raised. He looks somewhere between annoyed and amused, and Len is absolutely sure that he’s currently red as a beet.

“Chris!” Jim squeaks, and Len chances a look at him to see that he’s now totally cocooned in the quilt, all the way up to his shoulders.

“I am so sorry, Sir, I-” Len hasn’t ever been caught in this position his whole life, and he feels like he’s a kid again.

“Hey, he’s not my kid,” Chris says simply. “Winona’s still down at the market getting stuff, come in before she gets back.” He leaves them flustered and blushing, and whatever had been going on is very clearly over.

“Uh, I think your shirt – tractor. Down on the seat.” Jim waves in the general direction while he hastily goes in search of his own clothes.

“Right, thanks,” Len says, and he hurries down the ladder, tugging his shirt over his head when he finds it. He’s debating putting his boots on when Jim’s suddenly at his side.

“Also, you need a shower,” Jim tells him, looking slightly worried. “Your hair is, uh-“ 

“Yeah,” Len sighs, pinching the bridge of his nose. “Yeah.”

\---

After Len takes a shower and Winona makes good on her threat of excellent pancakes (Len’s pretty sure he’s in love when it turns out she puts apples and blueberries in them), they unload Uhura’s bike and hand it off to Jim, who claims to know what’s wrong with it.

Spock hangs around in the barn for a while with them, no doubt to spend this last little bit of time with Uhura, so Len sits on the top step of the porch, lazily reading a paperback that Spock had brought with him. Len can’t figure out exactly why Spock likes it enough to bring it with him – it’s Thomas Aquinas – but it’s something to keep his mind busy. As long as he keeps things going through his brain he’s good, won’t fall back on wallowing and feeling like a shell. He’s getting better at it.

The screen door opens behind him and he looks up when Winona sits down next to him, her feet bare. Len’s yet to see her wearing shoes.

“Reading anything good?” she asks, smiling easily.

“Not really,” Len says, shrugging. He’s half afraid she’s going to come down on him because she’s somehow found out he slept with her baby boy.

“That’s never good,” she laughs, and closes the book in his hands, running her fingers over the cover. “I’ve never read this one.”

“Neither have I, it’s Spock’s. He’s all about philosophy and theology and I’m – I’m not.” Len frowns, setting the book down between them. “He likes the different views.”

“He seems so upright and logical, I’m surprised.”

“Yeah, he is. But he’s insanely well read, can back up just about anything he needs to argue about.” Len shrugs. “I think he just needs to keep his brain going in overdrive.”

“And you don’t?”

 The question makes him squirm, and he looks up at the truck in the driveway, focusing on that instead when he answers. 

“Not like him. I don’t need that much at once. Just something to keep me going.”

“I think you’re selling yourself short, Dr. McCoy.” He looks at her in surprise, half because he hasn’t spilled to anyone he’s met in the last 24 hours that he’s a doctor, half because he’s never actually been called that in his life. David was Dr. McCoy. Len’s just Len, always has been. He’s almost unwilling to use the title. “Spock told me what you do.”

“People just call me Len, ma’am,” he says softly.

 “And people just call me Winona,” she counters.

 “Sorry. Raised that way.” He half smiles and she laughs, shaking her head in amusement. 

“Well, I’m glad to know your mother taught you well.”

“Did she ever.” Len smirks, thinking of Elise’s wild ideas about life and how it was more David who was always ma’am, please and thank you and how can we return the favor? David taught him manners, taught him how to read and how to set broken bones and stitch people up, but it was Elise who taught him how to live.

“You remind me of my eldest,” Winona says, smiling quietly, and Len’s suddenly very aware that whatever brother Jim ever had is probably long gone. Winona must see it on his face, because she keeps talking. “Same as you, good head on his shoulders, but he died when he was 17. We found out later it was because of a faulty heart valve.”

“We should be able to fix that,” Len growls, suddenly angry again, for the first time in months, about how stopped and held back medicine is, that they can’t do jack shit, that no one helps, and it’s just them, and what they’ve got, and it’s never going to be enough.

“You can’t be God.”

 “With all due respect ma’am, I don’t think any god has a place on this Earth.” 

Winona’s quiet, staring at him with that same soft smile.

 “Just an expression, Len. Neither do I.”

They lapse into silence after that, and just when Len’s thinking of saying goodbye and dragging Spock away from Uhura so that they can get on the road before it’s too late to make good headway for the day, Jim, Spock and Uhura appear from around the side of the house. Len moves to stand up as Spock and Uhura head towards the truck, but Jim comes loping over first, smiling. Len notices with some trepidation that he’s got a duffle bag slung across his chest.

“We’re coming with you guys,” he says out of the blue, hands in his pockets and looking quite pleased with himself.

“ _What?!_ ” Len says, mouth falling open. He looks at Winona for help, but it seems that this was decided before she came out to the porch, because she looks totally calm about the whole deal.

“Yeah, Uhura’s gonna leave her bike in the barn for safekeeping, it’s all good.” Jim is grinning like it’s his goddamn birthday or something.

“Oh my god,” Len moans, burying his head in his hands. “I didn’t even want Spock on this trip!”

 “Be glad you’ve got friends, you giant stick in the mud,” Jim says happily, and drags him up by an elbow. 

“And you’re ok with this?” Len asks Winona, who just smiles.

“Jim’s a wanderer. So was his dad. It’s just the way the Kirks are.” She seems way too sedate for this, but maybe she’s just used to people vanishing from her life suddenly, which makes Len’s stomach twist and he hauls his mind away from that, concentrating on being angry at Jim instead.

Jim suffers through Winona kissing his head and ruffling his hair with a sigh and an eye roll, but he does offer her a quick, quiet _bye_ before starting towards the truck. Spock and Uhura are in the back, sitting against the cab and talking animatedly about something involving god knows what. Len dumps Spock’s book in his lap before getting in, sighing when Jim climbs into the passenger seat.

“You’re officially a venereal disease,” Len growls, but Jim just whips out a pair of thick plastic sunglasses from his back pocket, slipping them on with a smirk. The words _Ray Ban_ are curled on one side in a scrawl. “Are you just here for the sake of sex?”

“Hell no, my mom wasn’t kidding about the wandering. I took off first time when I was like 15, didn’t show back up for a month. I’m here because I haven’t been to San Francisco yet and I thought it’d be fun to go with you guys.”

“Seriously,” Len replies dryly, backing down the driveway and then booting the truck into gear, rattling off down the dusty road and back towards the highway.

“The sex is just a perk.” 

“If you get anymore.”

“Face it,” Jim says, pulling his sunglasses far enough down his nose to look at Len over the top of them. “You can’t keep you hands off of me.”

Len doesn’t even want to think about how right Jim is about that little fact.

—

_We detachments steady throwing,_   _Down the edges, through the passes, up the mountains steep,_  
 _Conquering, holding, daring, venturing as we go the unknown ways,_  
 _Pioneers! O pioneers!_

—

Jim, it turns out, can’t keep his hands off Len, either. As soon as they’re back on the highway and Len can cruise along in fifth, his hand resting on the gear shift, Jim stars tracing little imaginary lines down between Len’s fingers, across the top of his hand and then back down to the pinky ring Len’s worn since he was 13 – his mother’s engagement ring, a simple silver band. He’d found it in her jewelry box when she’d told him to pick out a necklace to go with her dress, and she’d let him have it as long as he promised to keep track of it. As far as he’s concerned, the day he loses the ring is the day he’s dead and someone’s taken it off his cold hand.

“You have _insanely_ long fingers,” Jim mutters after a while. He’s got Len’s hand pressed between his own, lacing their fingers together. It’s weirdly intimate, different from the way Jim was exploring his skin earlier.

“So?” Len mutters, his eyes still fixed ahead of them, refusing to look at Jim. It’s hard enough when any time Jim touches him his stomach jumps.

“You should be playing piano or something.” Jim lets his hand go finally, yawning. It’s not like they had gotten much sleep last night.

“That’s Spock’s thing.” Len shrugs. Jim glances over his shoulders at where Spock and Uhura are huddled together out the back window, both looking like they’re discussing the meaning of life, hands gesturing all over the place. Len watches them in the rearview mirror, Uhura’s hair in her face and her eyes sharp.

“Think Uhura can drive stick?” Len asks after a while, and Jim just blinks at him in confusion. “They don’t need to be stuck back there the whole drive, we can switch if Uhura can drive the truck.”

“Spock can’t drive?”

“Hell no,” Len snorts. “He never even wanted to learn.”

“Why would you trap yourself in one place like that?” Jim wrinkles his nose, frowning.

“It’s not like there’s anywhere to go, kid. The furthest out of Town we ever got was to visit friends like half an hour away.”

“Ok, now your mom kicking you out of the house makes sense, I cannot believe you never really left.” Jim’s rolling his eyes, Len can just barely see him doing it.

“People came to me,” Len says, drumming his hands on the wheel. “My dad and I were kind of it for doctors outside of Atlanta proper.”

Len’s only aware that Jim is staring at him until he doesn’t respond for a couple seconds. He glances over at him, and Jim’s giving him a raised eyebrow and a Look.

“What?” Len mutters, staring back straight ahead. 

“You’re a _doctor_?”

 “How is it that your mom knew this but you didn’t?”

 “I have no clue. Seriously, like a regular old sawbones?”

“I do not saw bones,” Len grouses, casting a glare at Jim. “That’s barbaric, at least the way I _know_ you’re picturing it. It’s not 1875 anymore. I just stitch people up, fix little problems.” _And kill people_ echoes in his head, and he shoves it away with an inward little snarl, squeezing the steering wheel a few times.

“It’s very awesome in my head,” Jim replies simply. “Many things are.”

“Yeah, I’m so sure.”

“You don’t sound sure.”

They blaze past long dead farm fields, golden brown in the midday summer sun, their barns and farmhouses falling down and crumpling back to the earth. Dead trees, peeling paint, silos lying on their sides like someone’s chopped them down. The only thing that seems to be alive out here is the washed out green prairie grass, swaying lightly in the breeze. Where the horizon meets it’s almost like the grass just goes straight up to becoming part of the sky, stretching above them in plain blue, one single color not even interrupted by clouds.

Every once and a while there will be another car, another group of travelers, but Len doesn’t look as they pass. Jim does, Len catches him watching out of the corner of his eye, one of his hands pressed to the glass.

“Their whole backseat was filled with books,” Jim murmurs at one point, pulling back from where he’s plastered against the glass.

“Some folks just can’t let things go,” Len says.

“You should never let books go in the first place,” Jim says. “Don’t you have a book you hang on to, no matter what?”

Len doesn’t answer for a while, concentrating on the road and nothing besides it, like if maybe ignoring the books in his bag will make the conversation go away. 

Jim, thank god, drops the thread of conversation and instead rolls down his window, hooking an arm out and beating it against the door in some unknown rhythm – Len can’t hear it over the sound of the road and the truck, can just see the muscles in Jim’s arm shifting as he works his hands. Jim’s still lithe in that young way, not skinny because of any lack of muscle or fat but just because his body hasn’t quiet settled yet. In another few years he probably will have finally filled out to match his arms and legs, but in the mean time his torso’s still trying to play catch up. Len remembers being like that, only with him it was more waiting for the rest of his body to get with the program that his shoulders were putting on.

Jim drops off at some point, hands tucked under his arms and the window rolled back up far enough that he can rest his head against it. His sunglasses are slowly sliding down his nose as the miles roll on, his lips just barely parted. He looks oddly serene with the wind ruffling his short hair, and Len wishes he was Jim in that one moment – totally tired out, not thinking, just asleep even over all this bumpy road. He’s starting to feel the pull of getting a scant few hours of sleep the night before, and finally he pulls over, rubbing at his eyes and muttering to himself as he kicks open the door, going around to talk to Spock and Uhura.

“Something wrong?” Uhura asks, and Len’s surprised to see that Spock’s resting against her chest, reading a book while Uhura runs her hands though his hair and reads over his shoulder. He’s never, ever seen Spock just let someone touch him like that, and he’s sure as hell never seen anyone get near his hair. He’s starting to think that Uhura might be superhuman.

“Can you drive stick?” He asks tiredly, wondering if this is all a hallucination.

“Yeah, course. Need a shift off?” She disentangles herself from Spock, who instead props his body back up against the cab of the truck with a little sigh.

“If you don’t mind. We’re going in a straight line for just about... ever.” He gestures vaguely towards the horizon, and Uhura snorts out a little laugh as she climbs out. “It sticks between second and third, but otherwise it should be smooth sailing.”

“I’ll take that under advisement,” she says, smiling at him.

“Thank you, you’re a life saver.” He swings into the truck as she salutes him and opens the driver’s side door. The truck bed bounces on its shocks a bit when he lands, and Spock startles just briefly. Anyone else would have missed it, but after twenty years of knowing the guy Spock’s somewhat of an open book to Len.

“Scoot over,” Len mutters, shoving at Spock’s shoulder with his own as he sits down, yawning. Spock raises an eyebrow at him but doesn’t move. Spock and Uhura had fashioned a little cradle of blankets, and he slides down a bit, his eyelids feeling like lead.

He’s out like a light almost as soon as Uhura gets them back on the road, cheek pressed against Spock’s shoulder. 

\---

Len becomes aware of the world again, quite suddenly, when the truck stops and his head slides off of Spock’s shoulder. He wakes up with a snort a split second before he goes face first into the hand that Spock’s brought up, stopping Len’s fall towards his lap with a palm splayed across Len’s nose. Spock rather hastily pushes him upright as Len blinks the sleep out of his eyes furiously.

“I apologize if I hurt your nose,” is all that Spock says, and Len just sort of stares at him for a second, his mouth hanging slightly open as Spock shifts awkwardly. They stare at each other for a beat before Len clears his throat and Spock scrambles for his bag, swinging it over his shoulder.

It’s dark out, and the faint, deep blue-grey glow on the horizon to the West tells him that the sun’s only been down for a little while. Uhura’s stopped around the side of an old house, the sort of clapboard farmhouse that he’s seen a million and five of today. It looks like it might have been a nice place once upon a time, but years of disrepair have left the paint peeling in places, and the white paint has gone grey with the dust from a hundred summers.

Len swings his body out of the truck, landing awkwardly on sleepy, stiff legs. He grimaces, rolling his shoulders out, and walks around the side of the house ahead of Spock and Uhura. Jim’s already on the porch, bending down so that he’s at eye-level with the lock on the door.

“We sure this place is abandoned?” Len asks, his voice rough with sleep. Jim’s busy attacking the knob with a small length of wire.

“There’s a car in the garage, but it hasn’t been driven for years, and there’s enough dirt on this porch to have picked up anyone moving around.” Jim doesn’t take his eye off the lock, and Len looks down to see that there is indeed a dull brown layer of dirt on the wood planks. The only thing that’s disturbed it are Jim’s sneakers and Len’s boots.

The door clicks open as Spock and Uhura tramp up the steps, and Jim toes it open, peeking inside.

“Hello?” He reaches through the door to try the light switch, but the lone little click echoes through the house without any lights going on. Len, however, is more fixated on the few inches of skin that Jim’s revealed by the action – displaying not only a sliver of his pale back but also a gun tucked into the waist of his jeans.

“We’ll take the bottom floor, you guys get the top?” Uhura asks as Jim opens the door for her, slipping inside and followed by Spock. Len sees the flash of a second handgun as Uhura pulls it from her jacket just before she and Spock vanish into the gloom of the house.

“What the fuck?” Len hisses, invading Jim’s personal space, one of his feet outside and one inside. Jim looks comically surprised that Len’s moved so suddenly, backing him against the doorframe.

“What the fuck about what?” Jim asks back, and in answer Len snakes a hand around Jim’s back, grabbing the gun and pulling it free of Jim’s jeans, holding it up between them.

“You have a _gun_?” Len asks as Jim takes it back, pursing his lips.

 “Yeah, and don’t just grab it from me like that in the future,” Jim mutters, heading for the stairs.

Len stands there for a second before following him, rubbing at one of his arms. He’s seen guns of course, a lot of people who drifted through town carried them, but that was it. Herb had a shotgun above his door, but that was the only gun Len had ever seen in Town. They tended to be an easy going group of folk, no need for violence or any of the instruments that came with it.

The deep carpet on the stairs lets out little puffs of dust under Len’s feet, and the only light in the house is the moonlight that drifts through the windows. It’s almost a full moon – not quite there – and it’s making everything glow just slightly, throwing edges and corners into relief but not much else.

“I can’t believe you _don’t_ have one,” Jim says as he knocks open doors as they go down the hall, leading with the gun, checking each room. Len follows him, poking his head into the rooms. What looks to be a guest bedroom, blandly decorated in an inoffensive manner, then an office, then a dark, empty bathroom with the shower curtain missing.

“Why the hell would I?” Len asks, and then he nearly bumps into Jim, who’s stalled in the door to the forth room, the gun hanging limply in one hand at his side. “Jim-?”

He looks over Jim’s shoulder, into the room. It’s another bedroom, full of more moonlight, simply furnished like the other one. Desk with a sewing machine, mirror stood up in the corner, chest of drawers with a collection of framed photos and books on the top. The wallpaper looks like it’s some sort of floral pattern, almost all one color in the dark.

The bed’s a simple metal frame. The sheets are stained with age, and, decay. There are two bodies, no more than bones, scattered across the mattress. With nothing to hold them together everything’s lost its shape, ribs collapsing and arms akimbo, spread across what were once white linens. Both skulls, still resting on their respective pillows, are turned towards each other, looking at each other. They’re dull in the moonlight, not having had a chance to be bleached by the sun.

“They’re –” Jim seems rooted to the spot, and Len sighs softly, putting a hand on Jim’s shoulder and trying to steer him away from the room, but Jim stays.

“Look, kid, it’s just-” But it’s falling on deaf ears, because Jim carefully walks across the room, like he’s afraid of waking someone up, and bends down, staring at the bones like he’s trying to figure out who they were. He seems bright and whole against the skeletons, and Len goes in after him. There’s a pill bottle on the far nightstand, and another on the floor by Jim’s knees, rolled onto its side. They’re the newer bottles that Canada had shipped medications out in during the 70’s and 80’s, when the demand for anything that could treat insomnia, depression and stress disorders had gone through the roof and stayed there. Living through nuclear holocaust tended to fuck people up.

Len can just read _diazepam_ on the label, prescribed to Kaufman, Margaret A. The address is somewhere in Illinois, so he’s willing to bet good money that this would not be Miss Kaufman and that the drugs made it there under some suspicious circumstances. The other bottle’s for a William from Oregon.

“Did they kill themselves?” Jim asks softly. He’s sitting with his back against the side of the bed, and, Len notes with a bit of a start, rolling a metacarpal between his fingers.

Diazepam isn’t lethal alone, but Len isn’t shocked that these two found a way to make it work. All you really needed was enough of someone’s homebrew to get skunked on and then a bottle of pills.

“Yeah,” Len says, setting the bottle down on the side table.

“You know, it’s weird, I’ve – I’ve never seen a skeleton. Except the fake one in the schoolhouse in town. We called him Mr. Bones.”

“Most people our age haven’t.”

“But, I mean, I’ve seen bodies. I’ve seen floaters, they’re the worst. They’d wash up sometimes when someone decided to jump off the bridge upriver.”

Len comes back around the bed, offering a hand to Jim. Jim looks down at the bone in his palm before finally getting up. “It’s just-” he looks back down at the bones. “It’s like they’re not even human anymore.”

“Even our bones are human,” Len murmurs, and Jim lets himself be herded out of the room. Len doesn’t mention the metacarpal he’s still got clenched in his hand.

They run into Spock and Uhura at the bottom of the steps, and Jim sneaks back out the door, into the dark.

“We probably shouldn’t stay here,” Len says, running a hand through his hair and trying to tuck a bit of it behind his ears.

“Is there something wrong with the house?” Spock asks.

“No, not really. Just, trust me on this one.” All three of them are quiet for a few moments before Uhura finally breaks the silence.

“Someone died here,” she says, and Len doesn’t question how she knows, just nods. Uhura tucks her hands into her back pockets, holding her arms tight against her sides, like she’s suddenly afraid someone’s going to sneak up and grab her arm or her hand, dragging her off into the dark.

“Should we just continue driving?” Spock asks, and Len shrugs, because what else are they going to do?

Jim’s in the driver’s seat when they get back to the truck, legs drawn up to his chest and chin resting on his knees. He suddenly looks so much younger than he is, staring out into the black that’s nothing but endless dead farm fields. By some unspoken agreement Uhura and Spock climb into the back, taking the first shift of sleep.

“You ok to drive?” Len asks when he gets into the truck, handing the keys over. 

“Yeah,” Jim says softly. “I’ll never get to know who they were.”

“A pair of people who loved each other enough that they didn’t want to live alone while the other was dead.” Len’s oddly reminded of his own parents. But Elise stayed, she was strong. She’d loved David more than the world, but wasn’t willing to leave it for him. The world still went on even after people didn’t. “Or, who were weak enough to die together.”

“Weak,” Jim says as he heads back towards the main highway. “My mom. She – uh. My dad died when I was really young. But she stayed for me. And my brother. I’d like to think she’s strong.”

“She is,” Len says, and just as Jim had done so this morning, he wraps a hand over Jim’s on the gear shift, running his fingers up and down Jim’s, feeling the bones under the skin.

\---

Len doesn’t feel the truck stop, but he does feel it when someone drops into his lap, and he wakes up slowly, blinking furiously to get his vision into focus. He only realizes that the world is still blurry when it occurs to him that it’s because Jim’s face is just inches from his, and he’s looking at Len like he’s the only thing he ever wants to stare at ever again. Len’s been on the other side of that insane gaze for over 24 hours now, but it doesn’t get any less surreal, still makes him feel like his skin doesn’t fit right.

Jim’s got his hands cupped around Len’s face, his thumbs brushing over Len’s jaw at the couple of day’s worth of stubble he’s collected since he left Georgia. Jim’s rough fingers against the hair make a scratching noise, over and over.

“What time is it?” He asks, because he can’t think of anything else to say.

“Early.” Jim tweaks his head to look down at Len’s watch, squinting in the dark to read it. “Couple minutes past 3 in the morning.”

Len groans, popping his spine out the best he can with Jim straddling his lap and effectively pinning his hips down. 

“Any particular reason we’re stopped in the middle of nowhere? Just felt like staring at me?”

“I –” Jim frowns suddenly, and his fingers migrate across Len’s face, rounding the edge of his jaw _ramus_ , dipping and rising over the cut of his cheekbones _zygomatic_ , stopping with his fingers pushed into Len’s hair, resting over the side of his skull _parietal_. It’s like he’s cataloging all of Len’s features under his fingertips _distal phalanx_.

“They’re just bones, Jim.” Len’s got a pretty good idea bout what Jim’s freaking out about.  
 “But they were people at one point,” Jim whispers. “How could you live through the end of the world and then decide to end your own life? How does that make sense? How does that even _work_?”

Len takes Jim’s hands, holding his wrists and pressing his thumbs into Jim’s palms before pressing a kiss to the ball of Jim’s right hand, the one that’s more beat up and more calloused, the one he leads with. The first thing Len always notices about someone is what hand they favor, what foot they step off with first. Spock’s all left, Len uses both of his hands, and Jim’s all right. He’s got little nicks, probably from working in the garage. Len kisses his way up Jim’s thumb, and then Jim’s there, in his space even more so, pressing their mouths together.

Jim curls into him, pressing as much of their bodies together as he can, wrapping his arms around Len’s neck and just holding on to him, like he’s afraid that Len will vanish if he lets go.

“Bones-” Jim says, hitches out when they finally break apart, their foreheads resting together. For how worked up Len thought he was his breathing is amazingly level, like he’s afraid to let it go.

“You’re not used to people just giving up.”  
 “We can’t,” Jim says, and he pulls back so that he can see Len, can press his hands against Len’s chest. “We have to survive. That’s what you do. God, what the hell, I’m such a mess, I didn’t even _know_ them.” 

“You’re not a mess,” Len murmurs, smiling weakly. “You’re talking to the king of being a mess.”

Jim huffs out a humorless laugh, but he leans in to kiss the corner of Len’s mouth, up and across until he can suck a hot, open-mouthed kiss into the skin just below his ear.

“I need to get over this,” Jim says finally, quietly.

“You’ll get over it when you’re ready,” Len tells him, running a hand through Jim’s hair and then holding the back of his head. They stay like that, sharing the same space and the same air, listening to the almost silence of the early morning. The crickets have long gone silent, and the birds aren’t up yet, so it’s just them and the soft pings of the truck slowly cooling down.

“Can you take over driving?” Jim asks eventually, and Len just nods – he can already see Jim fading into sleep now that his minor outburst is over, washing out of his system. Jim kisses him one last time, lazy and warm, before letting Len awkwardly scoot into the driver’s seat. Now that he can look around Len can tell they’re in the start of low rolling foothills, building up towards something. The road goes on, nothing but it, and eventually the tall grass and rough trees give way to a landscape Len’s never seen in his life. What become juts on the horizon become mountains on either side of him, pine trees and scrub brush growing straight up towards the sky. He’s never seen anything but flat land, the kind of dry land that’s easy to live on, and now there’s this.

The roads up here are in disrepair at best, and it’s rough, tricky going, winding down canyons and though walls of trees. It’s all black, with differing shades of dark green and blue in the pine needles and sky, just the stars above him. He goes slowly, half afraid that there’s going to be a tree down or a sink hole around every single turn, but the road stays, and leads.

Eventually, the sun starts chasing him, breaching the horizon, reflecting off of the mirrors and bouncing into his eyes. Jim’s sunglasses are sitting on the dash and he reaches over, popping them on, the sun glinting off the beads on his bracelet with the movement. As he winds down from the mountains the sun blooms behind them, spilling light across the slopes and turning them orange and purple, making the trees shine.

The sun finally crests the mountain ridges as he comes out of a pass and finds a dead city spread out in front of him. At the far edge is a wide lake, a muddy blue stained with red this early in the morning. He recognizes it immediately, remembering the way Elise had drawn the whole place as buildings full of ash with only the smear of blue at the edge to make it seem human.

He stops the truck on the edge of the city, where it spreads into the mountains, and gets out, just staring. The mountains are towering around him, there’s even snow capping those that he can see further to the north, a white dusting where the tree line thins out. It’s like seeing the stars for the first time all over again.

He’s not sure how long he stands there before there are soft footsteps behind him, and it’s like breathing knowing that it’s Spock. He’s always walked the same way, the same measured, light steps. The heavier ones with him must be Uhura.

“Do you know where we are?” Spock asks softly when he and Uhura draw even with Len, almost like he’s afraid to wake up the world if he speaks too loudly. Uhura looks like she’s still half asleep; her head resting against Spock’s shoulder, although a smile creeps across her face at the sight of the city spread out beneath them.

“Salt Lake City,” Len murmurs, hands in his pockets. He wonders if this is how Elise felt; years and years ago, only seeing the mountains first from the lake side, not the lake first from the mountain side. If they got there in the middle of the day, or as the sun was setting behind them, lighting the slopes on fire.

Jim’s the last one to join them, his feet bare and the cuffs of his jeans scuffed against the uneven asphalt. He blinks in the early light before stealing his sunglasses back, right off of Len’s face, pushing them up his nose before he speaks.

“We detachments steady throwing, down the edges, through the passes, up the mountains steep, conquering, holding, daring, venturing as we go the unknown ways.”

—-

They pass through the quiet, empty streets of the city, Len driving with one hand out the window. Except for a startled heard of deer, they don’t see another living soul. The buildings are all burnt out, most of them fallen to the ground by now in heaps of black ash and charred wood. Jim hasn’t gone back to sleep, but he isn’t talking either, just hanging out the window and banging out some slow rhythm against the door.

They’re driving around the bottom of the lake – Len’s never seen anything like it, the color of it, the way it’s a deep turquoise and it glints a million other colors in the light of the sunrise – when Jim finally sighs, cracking his neck and looking over at Len.

“You never answered my question,” Jim says, and Len has no clue what he’s talking about. He stays staring straight ahead, at the road, the lake a gorgeous scar on the land just in his peripheral vision.

“What question?” Len asks finally, when Jim doesn’t elaborate.

“Why you’re going to San Francisco.” Len opens his mouth to reply, but Jim cuts him off first. “And don’t tell me because your mom told you to. I still think it’s bullshit.”

“She told me that I had to experience the world,” Len says, quietly, like he’s afraid telling this story too loudly is going to drain him. It probably will anyway. “I was uh – I guess I still am. Fucked up. My dad’s death fucked me up.”

“Loosing someone always-”

“No, fuck, Jim it’s not like that. It’s-” Len slams a hand against the steering wheel and then presses it to his forehead, pulling his hair back in an angry palm. “I killed him. I wasn’t lying. There wasn’t a gun, but I pulled the trigger. I don’t know how you people deal with cancer, but down by us it destroys people and turns them into cornhusks, and you have to watch them waste away. They have to watch themselves waste away, and eventually you can’t keep upping pain meds and it just all – it burns up. It’s a firestarter.”

Len forces himself to stop talking, pressing his lips together in a thin line and breathing in slowly through his nose, listening to the wind and the truck and Spock and Uhura discussing something in the back. The sun’s slowly coming up past the mountains, and it’s starting to glint off of the truck’s mirrors. Len knows Jim is watching him, quietly, waiting for him to pick his thread back up, but Len refuses to look over at him.

“It’s so much easier when it’s not someone you love,” Len says finally, and he’s almost sure that Jim won’t hear him over the roar of the wind and the tires. “It’s so much easier when you’ve watched a patient – just a patient – suffer and you know you’re ending it for them because they can’t deal with that pain anymore. But I – I killed my own father.”

Len suddenly pulls over, jarring Jim and making him anchor his body against the door. Len slams his way out of the truck, ignoring Spock and Jim’s worried calls, and shoves his feet through the dirt, hands in his hair as he walks along the side of the road, rubbing at his face and his neck before he collapses against a broken out old fence, head in his hands as he slides down a post into the dust. There are reeds around him as his shoulders curl inwards, hitching with something that might be crying if Len cried. They bend slowly, gracefully in the wind, tangling with his hair and brushing his knee through where his jeans are torn.

_I see the boys of summer in their ruin._

He’s crying, he realizes dully. He’s crying because after a whole hell of a lot of thinking about nothing, he’s suddenly thinking about David, of his yellow eyes in the yellow light spilling through the windows in his study. The way it made everything gold, even the arm chair, even the books on his desk. The syringe had been gold in that brief moment before it moved into the shadow that Len cast across the wood floor, a smear of ash against the ground.

_I am the man your father was._

He can’t even remember how he did it, how he walked through the house getting what he needed like everything was ok, like there was nothing wrong, how his hands didn’t shake because he was trying to be strong for who, he as no idea. For David, or for Elise, not for his own sake. He doesn’t remember – he’s not sure. He’s not sure what he even did that day, because he’s been putting up roadblocks and fences, he’s been building everything in front of that memory he can, he put Jim front and center. It was easy to think about Jim, get annoyed at Jim, be amused by him, help him, fuck him, do whatever to him. But now someone’s taking everything he’s built down brick by brick.

_I see you boys of summer in your ruin._

Everything’s gone. David’s gone. Elise is a million miles away. Gaila, Joce, even Clay, seem like they’re across an ocean, unreachable and untouchable. He can’t go home.

Eventually his chest stops shuddering and his shoulders stop heaving and he wraps his arms around his legs, resting his forehead on his knees. The tall grass waves around him still, unchanging and uncaring. There’s a bird singing somewhere, and he can feel the sun on his neck, working its way towards noon.

Jim finds him, of course. He slides down into the grass next to him, quietly, and grounds him with a simple arm around his waist. He presses his face into Len’s hair, breathing in, bringing Len closer. Len just concentrates on moving breath in and out of his body, just finding a cadence to make his lungs work again.

Jim doesn’t say anything, except for a sigh of _Bones_ into his hair, winding his fingers into the wave of Len’s hair, holding him upright and still as the sun gets warmer and warmer, bathing everything in sunlight in the early hours of the day.

Eventually Jim pulls him up, brings him back to the truck with his fingers intertwined with Len’s. He’d protest, but he feels like there’s nothing left in him to do so with. He’s the one who’s cornhusked out now, empty. Realistically he knows it’s just coming down from the severe level of worked up he got his body to, but he doesn’t want to be rational right now. Doesn’t even want to think.

Jim curls him up in his arms, between his legs, in the back of the truck, and whispers stories into his ear, just loud enough to be heard over the truck and the road, about the stars, the moon, the planets, about the men who visited them in rockets, met new people and new races, charted the constellations and traveled through the black of space.

—

Len becomes aware of the world again quietly and simply. It’s dark out now, but instead of in the middle of nowhere, they’re in a city. The truck’s moving along slowly, and buildings go by in Len’s vision, a handful of them dark, some lit up. He sees a lot of lanterns, but hears a lot of generators and sees a lot of glowing windows that might have lights behind them. The houses have pointed roofs, gingerbread detailing that scallops down those points and around the windows, across the straight lines of the porches. They’re all pressed together closely, butting right up against each other, going slowly downhill.

“Are we here?” Len asks, and his voice is rough from disuse and the dry air.

“Yeah,” Jim answers from over his head, smiling down at Len. “Yeah, we are. We talked to some pretty little blonde and she told us where to find a place to stay.”

Len struggles into a sitting position, wincing at the way his body protests from falling asleep in Jim’s lap. His legs are buzzing and so are his lips and fingers, although he feels like his lips and his fingers are from something else, the feeling of having nothing left to give that’s still sitting in the pit of his stomach.

It’s when he presses his back to the cab, shoulder to shoulder with Jim, when he smells it. Salt in the air, hanging heavy. He looks around, but it’s just houses on either side, although the ones on the other side of the road are smaller and newer, closer to the ground, just a bit more rambling. He hears the crash of waves, and just stares until – there. Between two of the newer houses he sees it – a strip of dark sand and black ocean, the lack of sunlight dulling them.

“That’s the ocean,” he whispers, and Jim just nods next to him. “The Atlantic’s all fucked up, it doesn’t even smell right anymore, its just sludge.”

Len scoots to the edge of the truck bed and just stares, catching little fleeting glimpses of it over and over again until Uhura pulls into a driveway in front of one of the little beach houses. The windows are dark and the garage door is open, revealing nothing but one very broken push mower in the back corner. The house looks like it probably hasn’t seen any tenants in a while.

Len feels wrong as they walk up the front steps, like his skin doesn’t fit anymore. He tucks his hands in his pockets and Jim hovers close to him, watching him out of the corner of his eye like he’s afraid Len’s going to go running off again. He offers Jim a quick, tight smile, like he’s trying to reassure him. Somehow he’s trying to reassure himself though, that he’s done. He’s wrung out. A fire started, and it burned right on through him.

The house is empty and simple, a few items of furniture left here and there. There’s one bed, which somehow goes to Len and Jim.

“There were couches downstairs,” Uhura assures him. “You look like you’ve died and been brought back all in one day, get some rest.”

“You, also, look somewhat like the ‘walking dead’. I believe that’s the expression,” Spock says to Jim, his back ramrod straight as usual and his hands clasped behind his back. Jim just laughs, shaking his head at Spock and giving him a slap on the arm, which startles Spock temporarily out of his wooden plank posture, although he recovers fairly quickly.

“C’mon Spock, let’s go explore the beach,” Uhura says, slipping an arm through Spock’s and leading him back down the stairs. Len’s dully aware of a sliding door opening and closing, and then the house is quiet, just their footsteps.

Jim pulls Len’s shirt off, and Len kisses him the minute that it’s not between them anymore, sagging against Jim and cupping his face, taking because he can’t give right now, just needing Jim. That disturbingly Spock part of his brain is saying _not now not now not a good idea_ but he can’t listen to that part right now. Right now he needs to not care, just feel Jim under his fingers.

“You sure?” Jim asks, and Len just nods, quickly, and Jim leans back in, kissing him the same way, devouring, but slowly. Jim’s shirt joins Len’s, and then their pants go, stripping away clothes slowly, Jim’s hands roving over every blank inch of Len he can get to, surveying and mapping the plains and valleys of Len’s body. He rests his hands over Len’s hips finally, and they kiss like they’re 16 and just learned what the hell you can do with lips, with tongue and breath. They’re in each other’s space, each other’s skin, and they never let go of each other.

Jim pushes him down onto the bed, lowers him, and Len lets him, shuddering when Jim’s mouth goes everywhere, his breathing jumping but nothing else, just panting and gulping. Jim sucks open mouthed kisses, hot, into his skin, across his lips and up his side and past his collarbones, until Len feels like Jim’s stripped him totally bare, like he can see everything that makes Len who he is, and he threads his hands through Jim’s hair, pulling him back up to kiss him again.

This is so simple, so easy, kissing Jim, their lips sliding against each other, and Len gets lost in it until Jim starts sinking into him, one finger at a time, and then finally, Len’s breath hitches, voices shudders. Jim keeps going, watching Len the whole time, his eyes bright in the dark as he works his way into Len.

Len’s back arches when Jim sinks in finally, fluid and languid and slowly because somehow now, finally, they do have all the time in the world. They don’t have anywhere to go, don’t have anywhere to get to or drive to, they’re here. They’re now. Len clings to Jim with his legs and his arms, his back arched, thrusting against Jim on every pull, every push, and they fit together just so, just the way that they both need. Len feels exhausted, but he needs this, needs Jim to take because he can’t give.

“Please,” Jim says in his ear, palm pressed over Len’s sternum, his other arm holding his body up. “You can do this, c’mon Bones.”

Len comes the minute Jim lays a hand on him, head thrown back and mouth open, trying to say _Jim Jim Jim_ but it’s just silent, Len finally all spent up like a burned out city.

\---

He wakes up before Jim does, and he stays in bed for a long time, sitting up and staring out the windows. Now that he’s paying attention in the light of the day he can see that the bedroom has large windows that look out onto the beach, and he watches the surf and the tide roll in slowly, drawing a line up and down Jim’s spine with his first two fingers in counterpoint to the waves. Eventually he drags himself out of bed, barely stopping for clothes before he makes his way down the hall, dragging his palm against the wall as he goes.

The mirror in the bathroom has to be an antique, it’s older than the house and starting to go grey and cracked around the beveled edges. It’s the only thing on one white wall, the light fixture that might have been above it long gone, only a hole left. There isn’t even any old wiring sticking out.

He pulls his hair back, dragging his palms against his head until he’s got a tail of it pinched between his fingers, only his bangs falling in his face. He looks tired, but he also looks old to his own eyes. He’s getting laugh (frown) lines around his eyes already. He takes in a deep breath through his nose, just staring. His skin is warm from the sun, darker than it was even a week ago. There’s a strip of skin on his wrist though that’s pale from where he’s been wearing his watch.

He’s not sure how long he stares at his face, but he realizes quite suddenly when he hears even footsteps coming down the hall that his shoulder is cramping, and he drops his hand and his hair all at once, letting it fall around his ears, curl around his jaw. He braces his body on the edge of the sink just as Jim peeks through the door, sleepy and slow, eyes bright.

“Why’re you up?” Jim asks, wandering into the bathroom and brushing past Len, sitting down heavily on the rim of the tub. He looks up at Len like he’s actually expecting an answer, but all Len can think of is _I woke up_ , and it sounds flat in his head. Most things are right now.

They’re silent for a few moments before Jim sighs, rubbing the sleep from his eyes.

“Are you ok?” He asks quietly. Len stares straight ahead at his reflection. He’s not sure. He knows he’s not perfect, and not good, but he might be ok. Maybe. He doesn’t have an answer.

“Can you cut hair?” He asks instead, and Jim raises an eyebrow, shrugging. If he’s thrown by the change of topic, he doesn’t show it. Maybe Len not answering is answer enough.

“I mean, it’s not that hard right?” Jim asks.

 “I’ve only ever seen my mom do it.”

 Jim’s quiet, staring at him with his head slightly to the side. He’s shirtless, and the basketball shorts he’s wearing are ridding low on his hips. He drags a hand through his own hair, making it stick up even worse than it was from sex and sleep.

“Lemme go find a pair of scissors,” Jim says finally. Len watches him vanish back out into the house before tipping his head forward, bundling his hair up in a messy, short sad little pony tail at the back of his head, standing back up and watching his arms move in the mirror as he pushes strands of hair behind his ears. The scar he got when he was seven from slicing his skin open climbing a tree shifts as his bicep does. It brings a sudden rush of memories with it, and Len thinks about saying no, but he lets them, remembering everything about that tree in the backyard suddenly. It doesn’t hurt like he thought it would, just a simple ache at the back of his head.

Jim eventually comes back, a heavy pair of silver scissors in one hand and soap in the other. Len gives him a look.

“Your hair is a grease slick,” Jim says simply, and gestures towards the bathtub. “I swear I mean this in a nonsexual way when I say bend over, bitch.”

Len feels like he could laugh, maybe, but instead he strips his tank top off and drops to his knees by the tub, folding his arms across each other and bending his head over as Jim turns on the tap, the water splashing against the porcelain as Jim runs a hand under it. His bracelets are bright against the slight white of the tub. Jim’s bent almost totally over him, his chest warm against Len’s back, and Len arches into that heat almost without thinking, resting his forehead on his arms when Jim lets the scissors clink to rest on the edge of the tub so that he can lazily drag his fingers across Len’s shoulder blades.

“Scoot forward?” Jim asks, and Len does, so that the water hits his head. It’s a shock – warmer than he was expecting, but he lets it go as Jim starts working soap into his hair, still bent over his back. Jim will scatter kisses across Len’s shoulders and back from time to time, and Len lets his body fall into a slow rhythm as Jim’s hands work at his hair, his lips at his skin.

He can see his hair dripping down in front of him, totally black under the water. He watches the water before Jim turns it off, and Len lets himself be guided back so that Jim can towel some of the water out of hair, and then back again with a snap of the scissors.

“How short?” Jim asks, and he sounds like he might actually be focusing on this.

“Just – take off whatever you can.” Len actually closes his eyes out of some childish god knows what when Jim starts cutting. Clumps of dark hair fall into the tub, cut straight across one end and uneven at the other. Jim works and Len watches until finally it’s just little bits coming off, and then Jim rinses it all down the drain, letting everything swirl away.

He takes the towel back from Jim, rubbing at his head like he’s trying to rub the hair that’s still left on his head right off before he finally sighs, scrubbing across his face with the towel and then burring his face in it for a moment.

“It’s a little, uh, uneven?” Jim sounds unconcerned.

“You mean I look like a Rock Hopper penguin,” Len mutters, but he finally lets the towel drop, looking in the mirror. He’s not sure what he was expecting exactly, but this is – he’s not sure. It’s uneven, but it’s short, and he can see his ears and the sides of his neck for once. His head feels oddly lighter, and he’s ok with that.

Jim presses their bodies together again, hands on Len’s side as he presses kisses into the back of Len’s neck, watching their reflections in the mirror. Jim looks like a trickster god, gold in the early morning light of the bathroom, the way his hair almost glows.

Something comes back to him, he’s not sure why, or how, but Elise is suddenly in his mind, laughing and messing with his hair, smiling down at him. He’s younger in the memory, by what seems like a whole lifetime. He remembers her smile, remembers David on the porch and Spock and a frog. Remembers both of his parents together on the couch, with Len, reading to him. Remembers them at the table, listening to Len prattle on about some crazy story. Remembers Elise’s little slip of a grin and David’s easy, wise smile.

“I’m not a weed,” he says, and it sounds stupid as soon as it comes out of his mouth. “I – uh. Something I said to my mom once.”

Jim is smiling at him in the mirror, the kind of simple smile that means somehow things are going to work out. Maybe they won’t be good, but they’ll be ok. Len’s ready for that right now, ready for things to start evening out, like sand on a beach under the waves.

“No, you’re not a weed.” He kisses Len’s ear, and then whispers to him, “you’re Bones.”

\---

_Till with sound of trumpet,_   _Far, far off the daybreak call-hark! how loud and clear I hear it wind,_   _Swift! to the head of the army!-swift! spring to your places,_  
 _Pioneers! O pioneers!_


End file.
